is the goal as clear as jessica matthews says? is the policy intact? >> well, i think there continues to be some straddle between the counter-terrorism goal of stopping the al qaeda safe havens in afghanistan, but the president did say our goals is to reverse the momentum of the taliban. he said that today. general petraeus' dilemma will be how to do that. i think we all would say, looking at what's happened to date, that the strategy is not going as well as people had hoped. the offensive in hel munprovince and marjah has had very little success. those are the kinds of things that general petraeus is going to have to sort out. hopefully he will be able-- speaking to elliot's point-- to be able to get a greater degree of cooperation and concert among this group. >> i think the real danger here is that the -- general petraeus, of course, is the primary author of the counter-insurgency, the coin strategy, that mcchrystal was carrying out. and what this whole incident does is it kind of obsecures the in fact, as david says, it's not going well. and the co