As his performance over the past week suggests, Rep. Darrell Issa's response to the tragic deaths of American citizens in the Middle East apparently depends on which party controls the White House. After all, in February 2007 Issa mocked the families of four Blackwater contractors slaughtered in Fallujah. Now, the Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has accused former CIA Director David Petraeus of carrying water for the Obama administration's supposed Benghazi cover-up. That would be the same General David Petraeus Issa charged six years ago was being targeted by Democrats "as part of an ongoing partisan smear campaign against U.S. efforts in Iraq."

Appearing on Meet the Press with host David Gregory on Sunday, John Boehner's Benghazi Grand Inquisitor suggested that Petraeus and the members of the independent Accountability Review Board did President Obama's bidding on the Benghazi probe:

GREGORY: Chairman, my reporting of the immediate aftermath of this talking to administration officials is that CIA Director David Petraeus made it clear when he briefed top officials that there-- that there was a spontaneous element to this, that it was not completely known that this was a terrorist attack right away. You don't give any credence to the notion that there was some fog of war, that there were-- there were conflicting circumstances about what went on here.

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Nestled deep in Sunday's Washington Post Style section, there is a little bombshell from Bob Woodward about secret messages passed by Fox News commentator KT McFarland to General David Petraeus about a possible run for the White House in 2012, or 2016.

The Fox News chairman’s message was delivered to Petraeus by Kathleen T. McFarland, a Fox News national security analyst and former national security and Pentagon aide in three Republican administrations. She did so at the end of a 90-minute, unfiltered conversation with Petraeus that touched on the general’s future, his relationship with the media and his political aspirations — or lack thereof. The Washington Post has obtained a digital recording from the meeting, which took place in Petraeus’s office in Kabul.

McFarland also said that Ailes — who had a decades-long career as a Republican political consultant, advising Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush — might resign as head of Fox to run a Petraeus presidential campaign. At one point, McFarland and Petraeus spoke about the possibility that Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corp., which owns Fox News, would “bankroll” the campaign.

Roger Ailes shrugged it off with a laugh, minimizing McFarland's involvement as some kind of cloak-and-dagger joke. Anyone with half a brain knows that's nonsense. Roger Ailes would have died a happy man after running a Petraeus campaign.

There are a lot of disturbing things about just the snippet of audio I've posted above. The transcript is posted here, and highlights some of the things illustrating how deeply entrenched Fox News is in the military-industrial complex. Here's one highlight:

MCFARLAND:: That’s not the question at this point. He says that if you’re offered chairman, take it. If you’re offered anything else, don’t take it, resign in six months and run for president. Okay? And I know you’re not running for president. But at some point when you go to New York next, you may want to just chat with Roger. And Rupert Murdoch, for that matter.

PETRAEUS: Well . . . Well, Rupert’s after me, as well. Look, I . . . what I have told people is, I truly want to continue to serve my country if it is in a — you know, a quite significantly meaningful position. And there’s all of about two of those in the world. You all have really got to shut your mouths — or shut your . . . Yeah, shut your mouths, too.

Yes, General Petraeus. Please do pay Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch a visit so they can determine your political future. Or the one you may have had before you started playing potsie with your biographer, anyway.

Who is Roger Ailes to be telling anyone what to do, anyway?

Honestly, it's McFarland that bothers me far more than Petraeus. For example, she raises the possibility of President Obama ignoring the Constitution and running for a third term.

Q: Well, but . . . and here’s the thinking: that they’re nervous about. . . . They feel that Obama had this mandate. And the mandate — in his own mind. Obama wanted to do Obamacare. . . . He wanted to do environment, which is basically controlling all aspects of the economy. And education, which is the future. So he pushed for Obamacare. He got that done. They didn’t anticipate 2010 results. But he now is going to lie low and be very centrist so that they win in ’12 and they get the other two. Now, what they need — and this is not from the chiefs, this is from political people — and what they need to cement it so that it doesn’t get reversed is a third term. And that means 2016, they need to win, the Democrats need to win, and they need to win with their guy. Their kind of guy. So that then you’d have the stuff as locked in place for a generation. Nobody can come in like Reagan came in and reverse.

And you thought wingnut theories were just for the likes of Alex Jones.

Earlier in the conversation Petraeus complains that Fox (yes, Fox!!!) has made a skeptical turn about the wars. That's disturbing too. At one point early in the recording, McFarland asks Petraeus what he thinks they're doing right or wrong. Petraeus' response is astonishing: He complains that they don't seem to be as gung-ho on the wars as they once were, and aren't bolstering them like they used to.

Kathleen McFarland isn't any kind of objective reporter at all. She's a Republican ideologue who cut her teeth in the Reagan administration, flogs "Benghazi-gate" to death every chance she gets, and functions as the Fox News spokespiece for neocon fantasies of world domination. Just a week ago, she was spouting nonsense on Fox News about Obama's Middle East policy being a failure because he does the opposite of George Bush. She was beside herself with joy at the prospect of a Mitt Romney presidency in August, and joined the frat boys on The Five to call young progressives "dorks" and "bastards."

If you are reading this and think we exaggerate here at C&L about Fox News, I suggest you listen to that paid Fox News commentator relay messages on behalf of Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. When you finish, you'll realize how insidious Fox really is.

Former Washington Post columnist Thomas Ricks joined Howard Kurtz to discuss the apparent media frenzy over the Petraeus/Broadwell affair story. Ricks was very shrill over the way the media has turned on DC's most famous and decorated modern day general and he's not gonna take it any more.

KURTZ: And how much did that courtship and those relationships and the e-mails exchange with journalists, and all of that, has that contributed to more sympathetic coverage given his problem with the affair with Paula Broadwell and the resignation at CIA, that he might have gotten otherwise?

RICKS: No, I don't think so. Actually, I think the media has been in full shark bite frenzy without regard, really. If anything, I find the real scandal here -- or one of the scandals here is how much the media has turned on Petraeus.

Here's a guy who has four combat tours in recent years. That's more combat time than any American general had in World War II, who has a smashed pelvis from a parachuting accident, who has a bullet wound through the chest from a training accident. He and his family, and I include his wife Holly Petraeus in that, have given enormously in the last ten years.

Yet when this scandal broke, we as a country were not as generous with him as his family had been with the country

I find this observation condescending and insulting. Why is it the media's fault for covering a story that includes the head of the CIA resigning over a sex scandal with a woman who he was supposed to be mentoring---who in turn sent nasty emails to another women out of jealousy she suspected was flirting with Petraeus while he's married to someone else? And---he resigned over it! Why is this outrageous to Ricks? He's been covering the military and these two wars a long time. I do agree with him on certain points like the FBI breaching privacy, but please, drop the phony sanctimony.

KURTZ: You seem to be suggesting that journalists are biting the hand that fed them, they were perfectly happy to have good relations with General Petraeus when he was on top. Suddenly, this scandal happens, fall from grace, huge tabloid style scandal, and you say the press has turned against him. Because I've seen a lot of -- particularly people like who know the guy, it seems to me the tune is more sympathetic, a tragic -- a tragedy for his family as opposed to the junk yard (INAUDIBLE).

RICKS: It's a matter that should have remained private, first of all. It's not a criminal act. There's no allegation that he's committed a crime here, as far as I know. You know, it could always change, more information could come out.

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You have to hand it to those Fox Newsies for partisan gumption. They didn’t let any lack of actual evidence of Obama administration wrongdoing in the Gen. David Petraeus sex scandal stop them from theorizing and suggesting that there was. For extra GOP points, Steve Doocy dragged in Eric Holder, one of Fox’s favorite Obama-administration scapegoats, and said that his theoretical involvement in the theoretical cover up “could be” why Eric Holder is staying on as Attorney General for President Obama’s second term.

As Karoli pointed out earlier, there’s a lot of Republican partisanship afoot in the Petraeus scandal:

David Petraeus is in disgrace because he had a midlife crisis or something and got hot and heavy with a woman prone to jealous, impulsive acts (sending harassing emails to her suspected rival, Jill Kelley). Meanwhile, some FBI agent with the hots for Jill Kelley and a "worldview" that included weird and unprovable conspiracy theories about political coverups to protect President Obama got impatient and contacted his teaBircher Congressional buddies.

The Curvy Couch Crew ignored those facts this morning in order to raise questions about the Obama administration. Gretchen Carlson said, “Something’s not being told about that whole side of the story.” Meaning why the FBI was investigating. And yet she left out the part about how that FBI agent with the hots for Kelley and an antagonism toward President Obama went to Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor with his suspicions and how Cantor called the FBI director on October 31 to push the story relay his concerns in the final week of a hotly-contested presidential election.

“How do we know there wasn’t a national security breach? They’re still going through (Petraeus’ paramour’s) files?” Laura Ingraham squawked accusingly. Of course, there’s nothing to suggest at this point that there was one. But she moved on to smear Holder:

Eric Holder, we’re supposed to believe, didn’t talk to one of his closest friends. One of his closest friends is Barack Obama. He’s been at the center of voter ID cases, immigration cases against Arizona, Fast and Furious, the refusal to prosecute the New Black Panther Party. I mean, Eric Holder is a fulcrum of a lot of what’s going on over the last four years. He’s very close to the president. And I do not believe, after all the years I’ve been here, that Eric Holder would have kept information from the president about a CIA director being a part of a federal investigation. And if he did, I think that’s incompetence or malfeasance.

If you believe the FBI – and I tend to believe them more than the heated hypotheses of Fox News partisans – there was nothing to tell the president. From ABC News:

The FBI withheld its findings about Gen. David Petreaus' affair from the White House and congressional leaders because the agency considered them the result of a criminal investigation that never reached the threshold of an intelligence probe, law enforcement sources said today.

The sources said agents followed department guidelines that generally bar sharing information about developing criminal investigations. The FBI is also aware of its history under former director J. Edgar Hoover of playing politics and digging into the lives of public figures. As one official said, the rules are designed to protect people (both private and elected officials) when negative information about them arises in the course of a criminal investigation that is not a crime.

…Investigators uncovered no compromising of classified information or criminal activity, sources familiar with the probe said, adding that all that was found was a lot of "human drama."

In other words, this looks a lot like a tempest in a Tea Party pot. On October 31, the day that Rep. Cantor called the FBI, President Obama had his hands full with Super Storm Sandy and the end of his presidential campaign. I don’t know about you but I wouldn't bother my boss with “human drama” details, either, if he were in the middle of a cataclysmic natural disaster and at the tail end of a national re-election campaign.

But Doocy, it seems, could not pass up an opportunity – no matter how wildly speculative – to take a smearing swipe at Holder and Obama. “Laura, that could be one of the reasons why Barack Obama’s asking him to stay on for another second term.”

Not one of the other three Fox Newsies on the set objected to such baseless conjecture.

No novelist, not even Tom Clancy, could come up with a story like this. A four-star general and Director of the CIA taken down by an FBI agent with an agenda and an obsession of his own.

Yet, that is the story, my friends, as silly as it can be. After updating our timeline and thinking maybe Karl Rove was playing some games with the Benghazi story and Fox News, it's really much simpler, pathetic and silly.

New York Times:

Ms. Kelley, a volunteer with wounded veterans and military families, brought her complaint to a rank-and-file agent she knew from a previous encounter with the F.B.I. office, the official also said. That agent, who had previously pursued a friendship with Ms. Kelley and had earlier sent her shirtless photographs of himself, was “just a conduit” for the complaint, he said. He had no training in cybercrime, was not part of the cyber squad handling the case and was never assigned to the investigation.

But the agent, who was not identified, continued to “nose around” about the case, and eventually his superiors “told him to stay the hell away from it, and he was not invited to briefings,” the official said. The Wall Street Journal first reported on Monday night that the agent had been barred from the case.

Later, the agent became convinced — incorrectly, the official said — that the case had stalled. Because of his “worldview,” as the official put it, he suspected a politically motivated cover-up to protect President Obama. The agent alerted Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, who called the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, on Oct. 31 to tell him of the agent’s concerns.

The official said the agent’s self-described “whistle-blowing” was “a little embarrassing” but had no effect on the investigation.

Got that? David Petraeus is in disgrace because he had a midlife crisis or something and got hot and heavy with a woman prone to jealous, impulsive acts. Meanwhile, some FBI agent with the hots for Jill Kelley and a "worldview" that included weird and unprovable conspiracy theories about political coverups to protect President Obama got impatient and contacted his teaBircher Congressional buddies. What excuse will Joe Scarborough have for the takedown of his "rising star" now?

Glenn Beck must be so proud, as must Eric Cantor. And now it is time for reckoning to occur. I would very much like to know the name of this proud conspiracy theorist who managed to cock up an ongoing FBI investigation and feed Fox News a few days of incredibly stupid conspiracy theories to gnash over.

He should post his shirtless photos and creepy text messages to Jill Kelley online too, because seriously, he should be roundly ridiculed for his involvement in business that was not his own. For that matter, what is Jill Kelley doing turning to this poor besotted lout for assistance with her "harassing emails"?

Do any of these people have any sense or do they just all float around doing stupid all day?

Update: Oh my, now it's getting really interesting. Seems the FBI is now looking at Jill Kelley's email, because there is the possibility of 20-30,000 -- yes, that's thousands -- of inappropriate emails with General John R. Allen, US/NATO Commander in Afghanistan.

Yep, they're "keeping us safe."

Stay tuned for the next episode of "As National Security Turns."

In case you hadn't noticed (and I'm sure you have), Gen. David Petraeus is playing the press like crazy in an effort to push public sentiment toward deferring the July, 2011 troop withdrawal. For the past two weeks it's nearly been relentless, but this weekend he escalated the PR war.

First, the newest reports of "oil deposits" in Afghanistan -- vast, rich, yummy oil deposits. That's the first course for what he served up on Meet the Press Sunday with David Gregory's assistance, of course.

MR. GREGORY: Let me talk about U.S. troops. I asked you before, when we talked about this July deadline of next year, how stifling is the, the concept of this deadline and this Washington debate to what you're trying to do here?

GEN. PETRAEUS: I don't find it that stifling. I'm not bowed over by, you know, the knowledge that July 2011 is out there. In fact, the president has been very clear, Vice President Biden's been very clear as well, more recently, that this is a date when a process begins that is conditions based. And as the conditions permit, we transition tasks to our Afghan counterparts and to security forces and, and in various governmental institutions, and that enables a "responsible drawdown of our forces"...

That sounds to me like the sound of a big middle finger being raised at the promise Petraeus made along with all of the other generals last December to the President -- that a timeline where the troops started coming home in July, 2011 was one they found reasonable and could adhere to. It's especially interesting that he would say Biden approves, given that Biden has been the squeaky wheel against any surge or other buildup in Afghanistan. Regardless, a promise is a promise.

I quote General Petraeus verbatim:

Inside the Oval Office, Obama asked Petraeus, "David, tell me now. I want you to be honest with me. You can do this in eighteen months?"

"Sir, I'm confident we can train and hand over to the ANA [Afghan National Army] in that time frame," Petraeus replied.

"Good. No problem," the president said. "If you can't do the things you say you can in eighteen months then no one is going to suggest we stay, right?"

"Yes, sir, in agreement," Petraeus said.

New York Times picked up this juicy quote from another point in the interview:

General Petraeus, who took over last month after Gen. Stanley McChrystal was fired by President Obama, said he believed he would be given the time and material necessary to prevail here. He expressed that confidence despite the fact that nearly every phase of the war is going badly — and despite the fact that the American public has turned against it.

“The president didn’t send me over here to seek a graceful exit,” the general said from his office at NATO headquarters in downtown Kabul. “My marching orders are to do all that is humanly possible to help us achieve our objectives.”

All of the shiny pretty minerals and yummy oil in Afghanistan don't make up for the lost lives there. Petraeus was either talking smack to the President -- his Commander-in-Chief -- or else he's talking smack to the press. He is, by all accounts, excellent at stroking and cultivating reporters. Just look at the job he did on David Gregory, who was more than willing to shovel handy verbs like "stifling" at the good General for his own brand of spin.

These are trial balloons. They're intended to measure the public will for extending Afghanistan. They're also intended to pressure the Afghans into getting with it and taking their country back. But if we don't register our disapproval, he might just get away with it.

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General McCrystal has been relieved of command and will be replaced by General David Petraeus as top Afghan commander.

MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama has decided to relieve Gen. Stanley McChrystal of his command over all U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, sources tell NBC News.

Obama is scheduled to make an official 1:30 p.m. EDT announcement about the general.

Earlier, McChrystal was seen leaving the West Wing and climbing into a van after his nearly half-hour private showdown with the president.

Via ABCNews.com

McChrystal's comments, as detailed in the Rolling Stone article, do "not meet the standards that should be set by a commanding general," the president said today while announcing the switch. "It undermines the civilian control of the military... and it erodes the trust that is necessary for our team to work together to achieve our objectives in Afghanistan."

The president praised McChrystal for his "deep intelligence" and "love of the country," but made it clear the comments McChrystal and his aides made could jeopardize the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

"All Americans should be grateful for Gen. McChrystal's remarkable career in uniform, but war is bigger than any one man or woman," the president said. "I believe it is the right decision for our national security."

Obama said the change was needed to maintain unity of U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and to "hold ourselves accountable to standards that are at the core of our democracy." The president reaffirmed that the change in personnel didn't mean a change in U.S. policy.

For me, the key statement in the President's speech was when he said "disagreement is fine; division is not."

UPDATE: President Obama spoke today in the Rose Garden about McChrystal and Petraeus:

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"What do I have to do to get you into this car?"

"How much can you afford to pay every month?"

"My manager's in a good mood."

They're trying to add a couple more car salesman cliches to the ones everybody knows:

"When you take out a car loan - probably the second-biggest financial decision of your life - you don't need a watchdog looking out for you."

"Watch out ... this will cost you a lot more if somebody's representing your interests."

And if you believe those last two statements, allow me to show you this brand new baby - it's got whitewalls and mag wheels, tinted windows, I'll throw in the deluxe sports package along with that ... oh, and we strongly recommend undercoating.

Campaign for America's Future and CREDO have set up a site where you cen send a fax to Barney Frank and Chris Dodd with a simple one- or two-click process, urging them protect American consumers from shady auto loans. And, if you act now, it's absolutely free! (Racing stripe and rustproofing not included with fax.)

It's easy to sound flippant, since everybody knows why we all hate car dealers, but the topic's deadly serious: As we've discussed at length, auto dealer lending practices are a disgrace. A massive, multi-year study showed that African Americans are charged more than whites for the same loans. Auto dealers routinely mark up the loans they offer, without disclosing that information to customers - a practice that costs consumers $20 billion per year and adds an estimated $647 to the cost of each vehicle sold. Auto dealers also play games with "gap insurance" that covers the replacement cost of your vehicle for loan purposes if it's totaled.

Another common car dealer trick is to "sell" a car to a customer by claiming they qualify for a no-interest or low-interest loan, letting them drive away in it, then calling them a week or two later to say the loan fell through. Dealers do this because most customers will have gotten used to the car by then, which means that many of them will accept loan terms that wouldn't been unacceptable at the point of sale.

Car lenders have made a particular point of preying on young soldiers, who are living far from home in great distress. That's why Holly Petraeus, wife of Gen. David Petraeus, is strongly in favor of regulating auto loans. The Petraeus family are hardly known as big lefties ...

Car dealers and their allies love to say they should be exempted from financial reform because they weren't part of the financial crisis. But think about it: Why should auto loans be regulated when they're provided by banks and credit unions, but not when they're provided by auto dealers? That's anticompetitive. What's more, we've already seen that auto dealers sometimes encourage applicants to lie when applying for a loan. If bank auto loans are regulated but car dealer loans aren't, unscrupulous bankers will simply use car dealers as willing minions to make an end run around consumer protection. With auto lending a nearly $1 trillion market, the last thing we need is a replay of the "no doc" mortgage scandal with car salesmen playing the part of mortgage brokers.

The defend-car-salesmen crowd has a couple more arguments, and a credulous Associated Press commentary by Rachel Beck summarizes them: First Ms. Beck repeats the assertion that lending legislation would affect dentists who allow patients to pay over time (the Senate bill does not and this will undoubtedly be clarified and corrected in conference.) Then, she conflates "family dentists" with auto dealers, as if they were both trusted service providers. (It's true that buying a car is as painful as a root canal, but that's as far as the comparison goes.)

That sleight of hand allows her to come up with this:

Just like the dentists, (auto dealer Tony) Federico says that more regulation will boost his costs. It could mean he does fewer loans, or is less generous in the deals he offers. Consumers then would have to seek out loans elsewhere, which could be less convenient and cost more.

"I am always looking out for my customers' best interests, but I also want to do deals that are worthwhile," Federico says.

So, who are you gonna believe - somebody named "Holly Petraeus," who's concerned about military families, or your trusted family friend Tony Federico? Hey, Tonyyy ...

Tony says you'll pay less getting a loan through him, even when he's done taking his market - and when has a car salesman ever lied? Sure, studies show that he's wrong, but who are you gonna trust here - the Center for Responsible Lending .... or your old pal Tony?

Rachel Beck's piece is embarrassing to read. Why would newspapers run it? Let's not forget that, like politicians, newspapers rely on car dealer revenue for their bread and butter. (Why, the Sun-Times was even willing to cut a deal with the New York Times this week to run luxury car ads in the Chicago market; luxury ads are especially lucrative.) Ad revenue buys a lot of credulity, especially on the editorial pages.

Hey, maybe everybody's wrong but Tony Federico and Rachel Beck. They're not - but let's say for argument's sake they are: Why not support this provision anyway? It doesn't prevent auto dealers from handling loans, it simply provides oversight when they do. If the Federicos of the world are really providing better loans at reasonable rates, there's no reason why the Consumer Financial Protection organization won't simply give them an "attaboy" or "attagirl" and tell them to keep up the good work. (Attaboy, Tony!)

Or look at it the other way: If they're not doing anything wrong, why are they so concerned about a little oversight?

Auto dealers throw a lot of lucrative fundraisers back home for DC politicians. That's why 62 House Democrats have joined their Republican colleagues in pushing for an auto dealer exemption. That's the money talking. Talk back to it: Send a fax. Call your Senator and Representative. If you do, we can have you in a nice financial reform package, complete with consumer protections against auto dealer rip offs, probably by this time next week.

Heyyy ... what a deal.

(modified from a post prepared for the Curbing Wall Street project of the Campaign for America's Future)

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On This Week with Jake Tapper, Rahm Emanuel says that the Afghanistan withdrawal deadline is really more of a guideline:

TAPPER: Your portfolio is a lot larger than just energy and the oil spill. I want to move on the Afghanistan. We recently have two grim milestones in Afghanistan. More than 1,000 U.S. service personnel have died in there in service to their country. And this war became the longest in our nation's history.

EMANUEL: Yes.

TAPPER: The president set a July 2011 deadline for the beginning of troop withdrawal. But there is some confusion as to what it means, exactly. In Jon Alter's new book, here's Vice President Biden, he says, quote: "At the conclusion of an interview in his West Wing office, Biden was adamant. 'In July of 2011 you're going to see a whole lot of people moving out, be on it,' Biden said as he wheeled to leave the room, late for lunch with the president. He turned at the door and said once more, 'Bet on it.'"

But here is General Petraeus testifying before Congress this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS, COMMANDER, CENTCOM: ... said that it was very important that it not imply a race for the exits, a search for the light to turn off or anything like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So what exactly does the July 2011 deadline mean? Is it going to be a whole lot of people moving out, definitely, as Vice President Biden says? Or could it be more nuanced, as General Petraeus says, maybe just a couple of people leaving one province?

EMANUEL: Well, no, everybody knows there's a firm date. And that firm date is a date -- deals with the troops that are part of the surge, the additional 30,000. What will be determined at that date or going into that date will be the scale and scope of that reduction.

But there will be no doubt that that's going to happen. And I know actually -- I look at both of those, and they're not inconsistent. But remember where we were on Afghanistan policy, that war had waxed and waned. And there really hadn't been a focus on how to bring that war to -- and the effort (INAUDIBLE), even with al Qaeda and Taliban, to a point given what was going on in Iraq.

The president raised the troop level and civilian participation to 30,000. This was creating a window of opportunity for Afghanistan. We are now at that point in Afghanistan, and in fact for the first time in eight years, nine years, they're actually meeting their police recruitment requirements as well as their army recruitment requirements. So they themselves can take more and more responsibility for the security of that country.

Second is we're also -- about a half of al Qaeda has been eliminated in this last 18 months. So we're taking the pressure to al Qaeda, taking the pressure to the Taliban. And we're making progress as it relates to, as you know, after the president's meeting with President Karzai, went back to Afghanistan, held a peace jurga.

There is also progress being made on that side. All of this has been predictable in the sense that we knew once we created this window of opportunity, we were going to focus on what are the resources that are necessary, where are we going to be making progress. But the July '11 date, as stated by the president, that's not moving. That's not changing. Everybody agreed on that date. General Petraeus did. Secretary Gates did. As also Admiral Mullen agreed.

And the goal is to take this opportunity, focus on what needs to get done, and then on July 2011, is to begin the reduction of...

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: But it could be any...

EMANUEL: ... troops.

TAPPER: But it could be any number of people.
EMANUEL: That's what you'll evaluate based on the conditions on the ground. That is -- but what had to happen prior to that was having a date that gave everybody, the NATO, international forces, as well as Afghanistan, that sense of urgency to move.