thing. and your other guest is right. if taking mcchrystal is going to undermine the president's policy, he's just executing the president's policy which he went way out of his base realm, if you will, took a lot of local hits from his own side for doing the right thing in afghanistan. if they replace him with somebody in theater, then they won't -- and there's no delay or they have a seemless transition, that's one thing. if they have a delay of a couple of months, we're at a critical turning point. it will obviously jeopardize the entire mission and in turn this shouldn't matter but it always seems to, this white house will be really painful politically for this white house. we're going to take a quick break. when we come back, the president was fascinating. he gave a brief statement saying that i want to meet with mcchrystal and then he wanted to explain why this mattered. after the break, you'll hear the