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By their sacrifice and by the sacrifices of their families. >> larry: was it worth it? now a change of mission. what happens next? what does it mean for the united states and the world next on "larry king live." in a couple moments we'll check in with david axelrod, senior adviser to the president. he's at the white house. first let's get reaction to the address from those in iraq. cnn pentagon correspondent chris lawrence is at camp victory and cnn's arwa damon who is in baghdad. chris, 50,000 troops are still there. what is their role? >> reporter: larry, they are going to be officially call...

Of this? >> larry, i think you asked if these are troubling times, they're troubling times for the american people. there's so much anxiety about the economy. we had a huge hole that we have to climb out of and that's taken, as the president said from the beginning, this is going to take more time than anybody wanted and it's an ongoing effort and part of his message tonight is we have to really focus on that effort and by winding down our effort in iraq that's one barrier we've crossed that frees us up to focus on the primary mission which is to get our economy moving again and we're all inte...

Offense. >> larry: jon soltz, in your opinion, is that a certainty? >> really in favor of what's going on in afghanistan right now. the president has changed the mission in afghanistan from a counter al qaeda mission to a counter insurgency mission. base xli a mission now to promote democratization and president karzai. why do it all? he's now up to eight. in reality, the timetable to be effective cannot happen in ten months. he talked about borders, pakistan and afghanistan. the only people in the world who see borders are the united states and western allies. we need a global strategy. we ne...

Reasons he's trumping up the idea he's getting out of iraq. >> larry: did he? >> i think my point of agreement with jon ends on the time line. jon's right. how do you both surge into afghanistan and tell the enemy when you're going to leave in 2011? that is an albatross. we're hearing it from commanders, insurgents and local, regular folks in afghanistan. they know we're leaving and so they're hesitant to side with us. this isn't a nation building exercise. this is capacity building. the president talked about it. it's the same language president bush used in iraq. we want to build the space a...

Who are still in iraq. troops that are in combat roles that are combat troops and when i went into iraq in 2003 and my first thing that happened to me that night we got ambushed by rbgs and i remember thinking when i finally got into the area we were at, wow, didn't george bush just said the mission was accomplished and combat operations were over? that's a very, very dangerous statement for him to make. if you look in the history of our country and the challenges we faced in beirut and somalia, you have to be very careful that the american public is aware of the dangers that exist for our tro...