The day being what it was, I’m just coming to this morning’s New York Times piece about Gen. McChrystal’s incoming Afghanistan crew. And it’s great and informative and on-the-ball. Andrew Exum worried this morning that Afghanistan may remain an under-resourced mission. Judging from this piece and from Gen. Petraeus’ presentation to the CNAS conference, from a military perspective, the operative question is, at the least, becoming How can we get what we need into the Afghanistan fight? rather than remaining What can we afford to get into the Afghanistan fight?

One tiny thing from Petraeus’ talk: he mentioned that the Times reported that McChrystal is building a "corps of 400 officers and soldiers who will rotate between the United States and Afghanistan for a minimum of three years." Petraeus corrected and said the number is closer to 40. Maybe there was a mistranscription by the Times reporters; I’m not trying to criticize.

Last thing. The Times also had a piece about warning signs of al-Qaeda exfiltration from the Pakistani tribal areas into Yemen and Somalia. During Petraeus’ talk, he displayed a PowerPoint map of the CENTCOM area of responsibility, with mission statements above given countries. The only places that read "Defeat Extremist Networks" were the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area and Yemen. (Somalia is AFRICOM’s concern.)