good to have you back with us here on the ed show. when president obama took office in 2009 he doubled, he doubled the number of american combat brigades in afghanistan. later that year he announced a surge of 30,000 additional u.s. troops with the condition that they begin to withdraw in july of 2011. with his own deadline just a month away, president obama will address the nation tomorrow night to announce a draw down that is expected to bring 5,000 troops home tomorrow and 5,000 troops home by the end of next spring. also according to senior u.s. defense officials the president is also considering recalling an additional 20,000 troops by late 2012 or early 2013. the top u.s. commander in afghanistan, general david
army has made great progress, but most of the people i talk to in the pentagon will tell you that the army needs at least two, maybe even three more years before they re trained well enough to stand on their feet, and the afghan police probably need even more time than that. so as dave petraeus has said several times, we ve made great progress, but progress is fragile, jon. jon: senator john mccain and others have advocated, you know, have said if you re going to withdraw troops, make it a relatively small number, and don t start pulling out the front line fighting units. it is possible from a military standpoint to pull out troops and not necessarily hurt your fighting force all that much. that s absolutely true, jon. i think we need to move away from focusing on numbers and think about the types of units that they re contemplating pulling out. most people i talk to will tell you, please, don t move out the combat brigades because if you do that, then you leave holes or you leave a
7% have been broken. 8% you call compromised. 44% you say in the works. 15% stalled. let s talk about one of the big ones he kept. you bet. i guess universal health care was a promise that he made. and it really was the core of the really was the core of the health care plan. the idea of expanding coverage. and that s one that he kept with the health care bill. and the health care bill it s important to note included about three dozen of his promises. so he made substantial progress with that. and many of those are now rated promise kept on our obameter. another on your promise kept line you have removing combat brigades from iraq. that was another promise kept. i think because iraq is very much off the front pages now, we forget that he said he would
is when you have little more time to reflect on who these people are, straight or not straight that i you are dealing with. i tend to think that the military is going tie adapt. its disciplined society. it s going that take time for some of these things to happen. there will be some people opposed to it just as there were people peod to the integration of the military back in the 40s but it turns out, it works to the benefit of the service and to the benefit of the united states of america. the marine corps commandant about that it could mean the loss of life or limb for some of the men and women, combat brigades in the marines, what happens to him now? does he to have resign his position? did you see anybody mountain military opposed perhaps rethinking their position in the
according to a new report roadside bomb fatalities are way down. 30% down since january 2009. thanks to the introduction of mine resistant vehicles. the military is replacing standard issue humvees with the new armored vehicles at a cost of $40 billion. in iraq the u.s. combat mission is officially over. but violence in iraq seems to be heetle up. sunday there was a deadly bombing in baghdad. this is reports from the ground saying that combat brigades have simply been renamed. not dissolved. jennifer griffin is live at the pentagon. when did the president again promising all combat troops will be out of iraq by now. paul combat troops? he campaigned on that. then one month after take over as president he gave a