laden. when this president took office, there were 180,000 u.s. troops in iraq and afghanistan. give the end by the end of this year, that number will be cut in half. wise his advisors know jobs will be the number one issue next year, they say he will try to make the case he wound down both of those wars and still stayed on offense to get bin laden and other terrorists. no doubt job also stay on top because all those people coming back will need jobs. at least some of them. i mentioned before there are serious questions and concerned about this. that s right. republican senator john mccain, the president s rival from 2008, was pretty harsh in his criticism today, saying that this could be a huge setback, he called it a harmful and sad setback for the country because he says the security gains could be lost now and that iraq could essentially go back to being all broken up into pieces. the back story is the u.s. had been hoping to leave behind, a
focused on examples of that progress, security gains in the center of the country. you can see again the fair amount of construction that s going on down here. reporter: we accompanied him to kabul, to fly over the sprawling capital city, a much safer city than baghdad was when he assumed command there. it s a tough environment. 50 or 60 attacks per day during that time in addition to these car bombs. there are periodic attacks in kabul. some of them are sensational, horrific attacks, but the frequency is vastly less. typically a six- to eight-week cycle. reporter: the general speaks of expanding security out from kabul using the metaphor of an oil spot that grows larger and larger on the map. the oil spot if you will is a term in counterinsurgency literature that connotes a peaceful area, a secure area. what you re trying to do is
cooperation with the government of afghanistan to work at the challenges we have here of helping to build a capable government. this is a hard task and my role here as united states ambassador is to take forward the president s strategy here. we ve got a very clear strategy, david. we ve got for the first time we ve got the proper resources. we ve got an array of good programs here in working with the afghan government and law enforcement, their judicial sector and we remain cautiously optimistic about our ability to make progress. during our visit with general petraeus, he focused on examples of that progress. security gains in the center of the country. you can see again the construction going on here. we accompanied him to near kabul to fly over the sprawling