engagement blames lower-level commanders and the fog of war. a first draft prepared last year said higher level officers sfald to provide resources leaving troops at the remote base vulnerable to attack. a report in the washington post says the final draft criticizes platoon leaders for not mounting adequate controls. it s triggering debate at all levels of the army about whether senior battlefield commanders should be held accountable for mistakes made in combat. more on afghanistan and pakistan with richard engel in our next hour. illinois democratic congressman danny davis is firing back at president bill clinton after news broke that the former president plans to campaign for former white house chief of staff ram emanuel in chicago s race for mayor. in a statement davis, also a candidate in the race, says clinton could jeopardize his, quote, long and fruitful relationship with the black community if he campaigns for emanuel who is polling right now
raelgtss with the pakistani government and pessimism about the relations with the afghan government. last i checked there s quite a lot of corruption in pakistan, as well. you re not going to find a perfect partner in this part of the world. you won t find a perfect partner in washington, d.c., for that matter, but having said that, i think that what we have to do is have a responsible transition in afghanistan, away from a resource intensive counterinsurgency operations that s going to leave us with the type of counterterror capabilities to use to target al qaeda but let s leave the moral judgments out because, quite frankly, there are a lot of hard moral choices that everybody from the president on down to your platoon leaders on the ground make every day. it s a lot of competing goods and competing dangers. let s look at this. we have a vision. and our strategy is based on the idea that there are two sides in afghanistan. there is the government and the taliban. and the government
the relations with the afghan government. last i checked there s quite a lot of corruption in pakistan, as well. you re not going to find a perfect partner in this part of the world. you won t find a perfect partner in washington, d.c., for that matter, but having said that, i think that what we have to do is have a responsible transition in afghanistan, away from a resource intensive counterinsurgency operations that s going to leave us with the type of counterterror capabilities to use to target al qaeda but let s leave the moral judgments out because, quite frankly, there are a lot of hard moral choices that everybody from the president on down to your platoon leaders on the ground make every day. it s a lot of competing goods and competing dangers. let s look at this. we have a vision. and our strategy is based on the idea that there are two sides in afghanistan. there is the government and the taliban. and the government s kind of imperfect but it s fighting the taliban. but in
clairy was the two and three gunner and then followed by a portion of the headquarters element so the platoon, the platoon, the medic, the rto of the platoon leaders, radio guy and forward fire observer so someone to call in you know, mortars if need be or direct the helicopters that are flying around. so we have those assets available to us and the troops on the ground can call them in. following the headquarters element was a team from weapons squad which is the 240 bravo consisting of a three-man team, tripods, extra rounds and then after them we had attachment of scouts so a couple different weapons systems within to over watch, have a little bit more magnification on the p withes and add people to the patrol seeings how we were pushing out into an area we didn t really
democracy. in that quasi stable democracy, we lost an american troop over the last few days and we re hearing again reports of the vice president landing on the ground in baghdad to celebrate the change of this mission to a diplomatic one. if this mission is a diplomatic one, what powers do our u.s. troops have to defend themselves if they are actually attacked? well, they can still defend themselves and they re still allowed to return fire when fired upon. jenna: if they re in a dangerous situation, they have to wait until they re provoked to actually fire. well, ultimately i think the commanders on the ground are going to let platoon leaders and sergeant toss make that decision if they should engage but yes, we ll be deferring to the iraqi counterparts. we have about 5000 counter terrorist elite special forces types who are at the tip of the shall peer still, taking the fight to remaining insurgent cell, so we re still going on the offensive, behind the scenes. you won t hear m