we bid farewell to stan mcchrystal with pride and sadness. pride for his unique record is a man and a soldier, sadness that our comrade and his prodigious talents are leading us. looking back at the totality of stan mcchrystal's life and career, it seems appropriate that he ended up in the special operations world, as a virtually nothing about this man could be considered ordinary. even as he rose to the highest ranks of the service, he retained his trademark humility and remarkably low requirements in his tastes and what we at the pentagon that call personal maintenance. he had little use for amenities they grew up around the rear echelon, much to the chagrin of his isaf colleagues. to stan, a fast food was a fine dining. fine dining nor beer gardens had any place in his war zone. because of his no nonsense approach, he enjoyed a special bond with his troops. the respected his devotion to them as well as to the mission. it is evidenced by all the uniforms here this evening. there remain just is devoted to him. that is because he never forgot

we bid farewell to stan mcchrystal with pride and sadness. his unique record as a man and a soldier, sadness that our comrade and his prodigious talents are leading us. looking back at the totality of stan mcchrystal's life and career, it seems appropriate that he ended up in the special operations world, as virtually nothing about this man could be considered ordinary. even as he rose to the highest ranks of the service, he retained his trademark humility and remarkably low requirements in his tastes and what we at the pentagon call personal maintenance. he had little use for amenities that grew up around the rear echelon, much to the chagrin of his isaf colleagues. to stan, fast food was fine dining. fine dining nor beer gardens had any place in his war zone. because of his no nonsense approach, he enjoyed a special bond with his troops. the respected his devotion to them as well as to the mission. it is evidenced by all the uniforms here this evening. they remain just as devoted to him. that is because he never forgot about the troops that

to replace stan mcchrystal. think this will get complicated, where you already see his numbers in afghanistan sliding, is when he starts talking about timetables. when they promise to pull troops out. it deflates the morale of the military. public is very smart. voters are very smart. when they hear them talk out of both sides of their mouth, it's difficult. >> let's talk about the timetable. clarence, on the roundtable. for the first time, we have the vice president saying when he told jon alter in that book, a lot of troops leaving in 2011, he said it could be as few as 2,000. >> we're hearing these little rollbacks in the rhetoric as far as how much of a pullout we're going to have next year. and as the administration has said again and again, it's only the beginning of the drawdown that they're shooting for. the president says it's contingent on conditions. but nevertheless, any effort you make to establish stability and to build internal security in afghanistan and unify that country is nation building. bec

i like to begin this morning by also saying a few words about general stan mcchrystal, someone i of known and admired for nearly 30 years. general mcchrystal devoted his entire professional life to the defense of this nation, and he and his family have made enormous personal sacrifices. during his lengthy deployments of the past nine years in particular. his contribution during that time were very significant. i can attest for the success of the surge in iraq, it would not have been possible without general mcchrystal's exceptional leadership of our forces there. similarly, the development of the joint special operations command during his on president tenure commanding it was extraordinary as well. most importantly, he has made enormous contributions in leading the coalition in denver in afghanistan over the past year. during that time, he brought impressive vision, energy, and expertise to the effort there. he made a huge contribution to the reorientation of our strategy and was a central figure in our effort to get the input right in afghanistan, to build the organizations needed to ca