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But the buck stops here. So let me be clear again. What I have experienced with the generals over the past year and what I've learned during my recent surreptitious instruction at Fort Benning have convinced me to do what Ambassador Eikenberry strongly urged me to do last November. Instead of simply caving in to complaints from Cheney about my "dithering" and giving Petraeus and McChrystal nearly all the troops they asked for I should have applied the full resources of the U.S. intelligence community to get a handle on the real prospects for Afghanistan.
So, I have now asked Ambassador Eikenberry to return to Washington to chair a fast-track, multidisciplinary National Intelligence Estimate on the conflict in Afghanistan. The fully coordinated NIE, with any dissents duly recorded, will be given to me no later than Nov. 15.
I want a fresh look at the entire complex of issues. I will expect members of the team that advised me last fall to become involved in critiquing the final Estimate after it is finished, but not to influence its findings beforehand.
I also have conferred by telephone with former President George W. Bush about all this. He heard me out, but then kept insisting that we cannot allow so many of our troops to have died in vain. I told him, as gently as I could, that he might have thought of that at the outset; that I intended to be candid with the American people and not sugarcoat the hard reality that so many, on both sides, had indeed died in vain; and that our task now is to end the violence in as rapid and constructive a way as possible.
Fellow Americans, I can understand your impatience -- and, for some of you, your grieving and your anger. Rest assured, I share the impatience and sympathize deeply with those who have lost loved ones.
But I promise you that this time around we are going to get it right, and my new decision on Afghanistan will be informed as much by the NIE and the lessons from Fort Benning, as by the four-star generals.
God bless America -- and God bless the rest of the world, too. Good night.
