>> this war is ill-advised, unwarranted at this point. we are involved in a local, civil, and regional war, where vital u.s. interests are not at stake. and at the end of the day, no matter how much we accomplish, six months a year later, you will not see massive traces of everything the united states sought to bring about. this is truly misguided, it should be wound down, not completely eliminated, be uh we should wind down our involvement there at a far faster rate than we are. >> i can make an argument that keeping troops in iraq would be far more in the united states interest than keeping troops in afghanistan. this is an absolute nightmare. you don't have leaders of iraq saying the things that -- and, of course, i'm glad we're getting out of iraq. but, you know, the president campaigned in 2008 that afghanistan was the good war. he tripled the number of troops and iraq was the bad, bad war. and so he got out of there.