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Afghanistan has other enormous challenges as well, including a political system that is still very much developing, although there has been some progress in the past several years.

David Petraeus

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David Petraeus
Age: 71
Born: 1952
Born: November 7
Former Director Of The Central Intelligence Agency
Military Officer
Politician
New York City
New York
David Howell Petraeus
Political
Several
Past
Developing
Stills
Enormous
Still
Although
Wells
Including
Well
Progress
Much
Challenges
Years
System
Afghanistan

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The first official statements of President Asif Ali Zardari's new government have been firm and robust. Pakistan is obviously a renewed democracy.
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I will not ever run for political office, I can assure you of that.
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I did a week-long assessment in 2005 at (then Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld's request. Following our return, I told him that Afghanistan was going to be the longest campaign of what we then termed the long war.
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After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair.
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Political progress will only take place if sufficient security exists.
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I think no commander ever is going to come out and say, 'I'm confident that we can do this.
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Don't forget Yemen, where there are also extremist elements, as we saw recently.
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If you look at casualties, you find countries that had much higher loss rates per capita than the US. Denmark comes to mind, the United Kingdom, they have suffered heavy losses at various points, the Germans as well.
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Progress in Iraq has always been about teams of people and teams of teams - and ultimately about young men and women, Iraqi as well as people from the coalition.
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Let's remember that the reason we are there is that we have vital interests in Afghanistan, hugely important national interests, as do the other countries involved.
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Al-Qaida in particular remains dangerous, and there [in Iraq] is some residual militia and special group presence. There are still between 20 and 30 attacks per day, still periodic car bombs and still loss of innocent civilians.
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Fighting in cities is a totally different endeavor than obviously fighting out in the open.
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We cleared many of their towns and cities and rural areas of al-Qaida Iraq and other insurgents.
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Reconciliation is what takes place, of course, at higher levels. President Karzai has been very clear about the red lines for reconciliation, accept the constitution, lay down their weapons, cut their ties with al Qaeda and essentially become productive or at least participating members of society in that regard.
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I'm living the dream.
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There [in Afghanistan] is also a growing insurgency threat from al-Qaida, the Taliban and other extremist elements, some of which comes from the tribal areas of Pakistan, as well as from the Northwest Frontier province and Baluchistan.
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The fact is that Iran doesn't want to see the Taliban come back any more than do most Afghan citizens.
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US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and I have repeatedly sought to emphasize that the progress in Iraq is fragile and also, possibly, reversible.
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