army general barry mccaffrey. my thanks to both of you. general, i start with you.about 18 people and very high ranking folks in this meeting today. i'm sure, general, you've been in similar meetings. how will the president sift through all of that information all of that input? >> well, it's certainly a very charged moment in terms of this administration. the way forward is do you want to be difficult politically? the american people are not supporting continued engagement in afghanistan and his party is not with him. he has articulated his strategy already in a marred speech. his new commander has operationalized that strategy we will embed with a local population. >> it does seem to be now there is this moment that he may take this moment to switch gears on the strategy? >> yeah, well, it's a challenge to him because it's going to be to him enhanced cost and bearing $4 million a month right now and casualty rates are up and he is being presented about a demand by his operational commander. i don't think we're going to get a dramatic outcome on this and not draw d

with us is barry mccaffrey. what's your take on this? would more troops be effective in trying to bring stability to the nation? >> contessa, the end of the day what the president has to sort out is what is his strategy. does he want to embed in the civilian population, provide local security and build an afghan army and take a decade to do it? if he does he needs more troops. >> all right. so, here we have defense secretary robert gates, he was on this week with george stephanopoulos. let me play his take on afghanistan. >> i think it's important to get the strategy right and then we can make the resources decisions, as i said i don't expect this to be a protracted process. the reality is that even if the president did decide to approve additional combat forces going into afghanistan the first forces couldn't arrive until january. >> the president said last week, general, that he was waiting to see about the strategy in afghanistan. is the white house clear on what the strategy is, what the mission is? and how it could best accomplish t