rajiv, you were just in this area looking at the same story. an important story, a dangerous story.how do you weigh the balance, the risks? >> it's a balancing act that every journalist who operates in places like afghanistan and in iraq has to engage in in almost a daily basis. when i was out there last week and we first got word of this, i weighed the risks of going up there. first the drive from kabul then, of course, the trip to the scene. and concluded initially that this was going to be a little too dangerous for me. i chose not to do that. i fortunately was able to get a ride out to the northern city of kunduz with nato forces and then spent some time at a german base right there not more than about four miles from the scene and was able to, in the course of about 36 hours, go and talk to witnesses and survivors at a hospital, go and talk to the german forces who actually ordered the strike, to local officials and so what i tried to do there was to find multiple ways to get at some of this information, because it was very clear to me when i was out there that the local offici

we'll talk to rajiv chandrasekaran and his analysis of the story. >> there's a lot of consternation here on the part of the military saying, you know, you've had this assessment now for many days, why aren't there more meetings on this? why aren't you guys focusing in on bearing down on this? we're fighting a war out there and we need washington to be able to multitask. now, admittedly, health care is the top priority. the administration wants a bill out of congress soon. but there is frustration, palpable frustration on the part of the military, both at the pentagon and out in the field in afghanistan. >> rose: also this evening, an analysis of iran by haleh esfandiari. you may remember her, she the scholar from washington who went to visit her 93-year-old mother in tehran and was arrested. >> had washington not allocated that money and had washington engaged iran, this would not have happened to me and today we wouldn't have seen other iranian-american and americans sitting in jail. i really think there was this misunderstanding and lack of exchange between the two countries. >> rose:

feltas the right thing tory to extract both the afghan jrnalist and the british urnalist. >> bro: rajiv the rules of engagement fm your perspective? can the journalists reasably exct that the military will come in ifou are put into danger le that and kidnapd? >> never operate with that presumption. wh you're in a war zone and u are operating in an unembedd capacity-- that is not aveling with the military forces, asteve farrell was doing whene went up there, as i do quite a bit when i'm in afghanistan-- you can'have the expectation that if u get into ouble somebody is going to come andave you. now, sve was fortunate in this ca that the british military decided to mount ts operation. it'snfortunate that his translator and commando ansome of the cilians in the area were killed in that. t i never go into it with th prumption that, ohthere is somebody tt is going to pull me out of thisf i get into trouble. but the to follow up on at bing was saying, you kno ghanistan is a withdrew neel kashkari btlefield because nato troops are noeverywhere. it is not always aactive warfw ne and there are pa

. >> the "washington post's" rajiv sandrakanarian joins us. let's talk what we saw last night on 6 "60 minutes" and wha general mcchrystal said and robert gates said. what do you see shaping up as they go into this critical national security council meeting tomorrow? >> as you pointed out earlier, there are two big real issues here, right. there's the overall question of the strategy. what is the u.s. goal, how does the u.s. accomplish that. it had been decided earlier, that the strategy was really focusing on al qaeda. but implementing a much broader counterinsurgency strategy that involved protecting the afghan people, doing elements of nation-building. and now there's also the mcchrystal troop request that's going to make its way to the white house and factor into the discussions. what i keep hearing is that what the white house wants to do first and foremost and actually also what defense secretary gates wants done, is a discussion about strategy and goals first. and then getting to the issue of how many more troops of any get sent over to