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Al Qaeda is still a threat. We cannot pretend somehow that because Barack Hussein Obama got elected as president, suddenly everything is going to be OK.

Once the attacks occur, as we learned on Sept. 11, it is too late. It makes little sense to deprive ourselves of an important, and legal, means to detect and prevent terrorist attacks while we are still in the middle of a fight to the death with al Qaeda.

Now the fact that terrorists throughout the world see this as an opportunity to defeat the United States, we have to be - and every Democratic candidate, even those who opposed us going in, now say we just simply can't cut and run.

In 2001-2002, I told the president that the election was supposed to take place when the war was over, at a time when we could return to peaceful life. We agreed upon that. However, I can see now that the election cannot be delayed any longer.

Preventing radicalization that leads to violence here in America is part of our larger strategy to decisively defeat al Qaeda.

We hope and we've made clear that the forces need to come out. It needs to be full and complete withdrawal. Our position is it needs to be done as soon as possible so that the elections can be free, fair and free of outside influence.

A couple of weeks is a long time in American politics.

Right now we're on the President Obama plan, and we'll stay with that. And from my perspective, the reason we're there is to make sure that we can achieve the principal goal which is ensure that Afghanistan can never become a safe haven for a terrorist organization like al Qaeda.

Staying in a very public fight with the U.S. is exactly what Al Qaeda wants.

Al Qaeda likes to coordinate, have a central command to be able to send out emissaries around that they have highly trained and say, 'This is the moment we're going to do a large-scale attack.'