host: tom defrank, always a pleasure to have you here. please come back again.il ryan, good to see you again. will you come back again? guest: any time. guest: thank you. host: we're going to take a short break. when we come back we'll turn our attention to afghanistan and more politics. but first, as we always do, a look at some of the leading events and issues that shaped washington this week as viewed by a few of the leading editorial cartoonists from around the country. >> for the next half hour, we want to turn our attention to the latest developments in afghan. we have the former special envoy to afghanistan from the bush administration. thanks very much for being with us. guest: thank you. host: let's talk about the operation in margea. how are we doing? guest: we're doing 59 but this is the easy part. the strategy is called take hold and build. and we're in the take part. that's largely concluded. we've seized it. it was largely controlled by the taliban. they've been largely expelled. but take has always been easy in afghanistan. it's holding and buildi