urbandale. it looks like a sizeable crowd. what is the president hoping to accomplish here that perhaps he won t or maybe it s the warm-up to the convention? reporter: hi, fred. that s exactly what it is. today launches what the campaign is calling their road to charlotte which is, of course, the road to the big speech he ll be giving on thursday night in charlotte at the democratic convention accepting his party s nomination once again. his goal is to continue to draw contrasts between the plans he has and what he s already done to help the middle class in terms of tax cuts or affordable access to health care and college and what he says his opponents do which is offer plans and proposals that will favor the rich. tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and we expect to hear some of that today. this is his third trip to iowa in the last three weeks and the state has six electoral votes and it shows you how important it is for them to fight for the state
tuesday. our athena jones is in urbandale. it looks like a sizeable crowd. what is the president hoping to accomplish here that perhaps he won t or maybe it s the warm-up to the convention? reporter: hi, fred. that s exactly what it is. today launches what the campaign is calling their road to charlotte which is, of course, the road to the big speech he ll be giving on thursday night in charlotte at the democratic convention accepting his party s nomination once again. his goal is to continue to draw contrasts between the plans he has and what he s already done to help the middle class in terms of tax cuts or affordable access to health care and college and what he says his opponents do which is offer plans and proposals that will favor the rich. tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and we expect to hear some of that today. this is his third trip to iowa in the last three weeks and the state has six electoral votes and it shows you how important it is
d-day. we ve since been involved in numerous wars and hostilities all over the world but none with such a clear-cut beginning objective and end. that s painfully clear as five u.s. troops are killed in a rocket attack in iraq and as defense secretary gates wraps up an emotional tour of afghanistan. gates is retiring at the end of this month with no end in sight to the afghan war. i just want you to know i think about you every day. i feel your hardship and your sacrifice and your burden and that of your families more than you can possibly know. you are, i believe, the best our country has to offer and you will be in my thoughts and prayers every day for the rest of my life. thank you. back at the white house, president obama today brought in the rest of his national security team to update the plans to begin. now the key word there is begin pulling troops out of afghanistan. so let s take a look at this. here is where things stand. okay? technically, the war in iraq is ov
operations inside pakistan, and in return, you would allow us, our senior leaders, to exist and live here in pakistan without coming after us. the key here is that u.s. officials say at this point they don t see any evidence that al qaeda actually presented this plan to pakistani officials. right now all they have is that it atears to be an internal discussion. cnn got immediate reaction from the u.s. ambassador. let s listen to what he said about this. you can think of many things of wanting to do them and so did osama bin laden. question is did he raise it with anyone and the u.s. government clearly says that he did not. it was something that he and his associates were considering among themselves. so if we knew something about it we would have done something about it long ago. so absolute denial there from the pakistani government here, at least in the u.s. chris, any more details on to whom osama bin laden may have been reaching out to in the pakistani government or
wouldn t vote for this because the number isn t high enough, they re not cutting $61 billion, but there s another growing concern that people actually think that they might be getting hood winked inside the republican rank and file. here s why. the congressional budget office issued a report says the bill does cut $38 billion, but only a fraction of those savings will be realized this year. 352 million dollars and the discrepancy centers around a difference between spending, which is money going out the door this year and the spending authority. here s what the house speaker said about this. certainly, it has caused some confusion. let s understand that we re cutting $38.5 billion of money that has already been authorized and appropriated. anybody who don t believe this money would be spent if we don t act is kidding themselves. reporter: republican leaders are getting so many questions, they just organized a briefing to walk them through, but i got to tell you according