he was joined by secretary of state hillary clinton, joint chiefs chairman mike mullin and stephen chu. this includes a detailed review of the report by pentagon and state department officials. ,, >> i am pleased to have secretary clinton and secretary chu joining us to make this announcement. their presence is indicative of the importance of the issues and the significant interagency cooperation that the review enjoyed. but secretary clinton and chu and the admiral will make brief comments in a moment. we will take a few questions after that limited to the npr. the npr creates a road map for president obama's agenda for producing nuclear weapons in the international community. this review describes how the u.s. will reduce the role and numbers of nuclear weapons with a long-term goal of the nuclear- free world. driven by the changing nature of the security environment, the npr opuses on five key objectives. preventing nuclear proliferation and terrorism. reducing the role of u.s. nuclear weapons. maintaining strategic deterrence instability at a reduced nuclear force levels. strengthe

joint chiefs of staff chairman mike mullin has said that kandahar is as critical to the mission in afghanistan as baghdad was in iraq. later we'll be joined by dexter filkins and greg jaffe who have just returned from reporting in the region but i'm pleased to have general david petraeus. >> pleased to be with you, charlie. it is the birthplace of the taliban, also where the 9/11 attacks were originally conceived. that's where they were planned. so it has enormous importance to the taliban and to extremists writ large. it will not be a hub-to-hub offensive. this is not going to be something like the clearance of ramadi or, say, southwestern baghdad. this in fact is as much political as it is military, and in fact, that's why it was so important that president karzai went down to kandahar a few weeks ago, met with 1,500 of the tribal elders, leaders, political notables and others, and in fact, heard from them, some of them criticism of the afghan government, criticism of president karzai, president karzai in turn forthrightly -- this was all on the television camera, this was not a hand-picked

there is no question reaching no question mike mullins works -- there is no question mike mullins works on this, but he has some inherent authority can do because he is chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. it is very rough. it probably breaks down at some point, but i think that might be transferred, but the goldwater- nichols model is not. >> we considered a number of models. one thing we did not want to do is to rebuild the department of homeland security. 22 agencies put together in that new form has proved to cause a number of digestion problems reaching not just their but certainly in congress common -- problems -- not just their but certainly in congress, and we have used models that have been suggested by the joint commission and the 9-11 commission and others, and it seems to be kind of right. mike of experience in the military gives him a certain advantage i do not have in understanding how goldwater- nichols worked there, but i continued to believe the joint command idea was a simpler way to leverage the strength of a number of agencies. it is not just the cia and dni relati