meeting and does take into full consideration all of the variables. >> he does. and this is the conflict within obama, quite frankly. he's commander in chief, he knows and he committed himself in the campaign, to make this the war we were going to pay attention to. intellectually he looks at the data, the intelligence on the afghan war, and there's a lot of dreary negative news. in fact, just back in may he came out of one of the monthly reviews, the top secret kind of assessments they make in the situation room at the white house, and said, given this definition of the problem, i don't know how we come up with a solution. so this is a war that hangs in the balance. it's not clear where it's going. and this is the portrait of him, unvarnished, unspun, detail after detail, meeting -- there