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That's a order. that's what -- >> john, officers have told me that if you have to say that's an order, that is already an acknowledgement it's not working, that your command presence isn't working. >> well, that's -- that's a fair point. >> if you have to say someone you gave an order to that's an order. they know it's an order if you gave it to them. they know what an order sounds like. >> there's a fair point. he doesn't want there to be any ambiguity. a young democratic president with no experience in the military so they were testing him, and when i asked him were you jammed by the pentago...

Welcome back to "hardball." just when you thought the gulf oil disaster couldn't get worse, it does. today an undersea robot bumped into the venting system and bp had to remove the cap that had been containing some of the spewing oil. now it's rushing full force into the gulf. john hofmeier is the ceo of shell and the author of "why we hate the oil companies." reason for that. i've asked you to come on for a reason, obviously thinking with inside the box and trusting bp to come up with the next attempt has not succeeded. in fact, it's gotten worse from the day we've been in there. we tried jun...

Instead of controlling all of afghanistan, instead of having democratically elected government in kabul which is to have something like that, it will probably take a century or more, he's going to have to accept and has accepted the notion of having certain areas that are under control and other areas that are not under anybody's control. the important areas like -- like helmand and kandahar, the areas along the pakistani border, but i think about two years from now you're not going to have much more under american tutelage than that, and i think petraeus has agreed to that. >> john, that's th...

Retired colonel jack jacobs an msnbc analyst and "newsweek's" jonathan alter, author of "the promise." congratulations, jonathan. once again, you've scored a big one in your book "the promise." it's got all about the run-up with this with the fights between the president and general mcchrystal. it's a great look, by the way. anybody who wants to read a look at how we got to today read "the promise" by john. let me start with colonel jacobs on the ground over there in afghanistan, just debating as we came out of the first part of the program with what happens now. we've got a new general. will ...