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and we will be talking politics. will you be doing it during this thanksgiving holiday? all coming up on washington journal. you can send us a tweet. good morning. we begin with afghanistan. american troops on the ground in what has become america s longest war. joining us live is brig. gen. william graham. thank you for being with us on this holiday. thanks for having us. happy thanksgiving to you and all your viewers. host: he is joining us via skype. so there is a little bit of a delay. let s begin with what is america s longest war. from your standpoint what are some of the biggest challenges on the ground? guest: in just a minute and we will get that out of the way. this is my second tour in afghanistan and what i will noisywith you as another helicopter flies past is that there is optimism here with the afghan people. the new u.s. policy and its our nato allies is playing well with afghanistan. there is true optimism here. by someed here today amazing american p ....
increased focus on exercises that we have seen over the recent weeks and months as an effort to try to boost the effect of deterrent along with the diplomatic overtures that secretary of state tillerson has undertaken. afghanistan, the same goal but different strategies under presidents bush, obama and trump. as the current strategy working from your standpoint? guest: we have 4000 plus troops and i think we will see if that many surge many more were added in the obama administration. we will see that many surge has the desired effect. there is an effort to double the afghan special operations forces which i have observed over many and also to double or triple their air capacity and that s a very difficult thing, the air capacity. because you have to have english-speaking pilots. all of this is really long-term andlopmental efforts happening at the same time to the taliban of course has madeased its attacks and some major gains around the countryside. it is fair with ....
and they ve been thinking about holding a victory party the in the cup we re told will grow via but they ve been asked to do it because the final results will be released to moralise a provisional result of war again where house on a saleable lead over he s contend is the other the other candidate joseph walker the man who s been prez vice president in liberia for the past hold three years old way of course very hopeful with the youth of this country whom for up to six the parson of the fashion of this country they have been seen sold tribulation in some of the streets but nothing as much as what the supporters of george will have been planning it s as good as done that now where he s set to become the next president of liberia who will take over from ellen johnson sirleaf in mid january peace is the main thing liberians want right now and with the widespread support. among the solution of this country many people feel caught in the house what it takes to bring the coun ....
a media s deputy bureau chief and is currently working in tehran he says some media outlets are having problems trying to report on the protests. now it seems relatively calm but i have to say that it s very difficult for us to report from aaron i mean there are very tight restrictions on what the media can to iran we know there s a heavy police presence but around is actually not in the focus of much of the rest unlike the last major demonstrations in two thousand and nine it s mostly been out in the provinces we had only scattered protests the last few nights but it does you slightly come as far as we can talk now as much as people want to see this revolution returns and some of the slogan certainly have been revolutionary in terms of attacking the islamic rebels regime and. these have been driven by economic grievances bread and butter issues such as high unemployment soaring prices things that have been bubbling away in iranian society progress on time and people ar ....
very warm welcome you are watching r.t. international with me nicky aaron good to have you with us this hour. but we can exchange has been granted an ecuadorian i.d. card and while some are seeing an attempted step towards ending his five year confinement and the country s london embassy artie s laura smith has the details but after a while of nothing no movement from inside the ecuadorian embassy there s been a series of developments in the last twenty four hours julian assange is posted a photograph of himself in an ecuadorian football shirt which gave rise to a lot of speculation about what that could mean he generally doesn t do things unless they mean something and then we thought reports surfacing from quito which said that he had received a national identity number so he s been entered into the tax register essentially which is something that will only happen to citizens of ecuador so the strong suggestion is that from this national identity number he will then p ....