Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) has read the Army-Marine Corps Field Manual on Counterinsurgency that Petraeus quarterbacked in 2006, and he notes that it urges about 20-25 troops per 1000 inhabitants in a given intervention to provide for the security of that population. Doing some math, he calculates that even assuming all goes well with the accelerated training and equipping of the Afghan security forces, their troops, ours and NATO totals about 9 per 1000. Right now it’s about 7 per 1000. That’s a “concern for me,” Begich says.

Petraeus agrees. While he says it’s actually unclear how many people live in Afghanistan, “the bottom line [is] your point is exactly right,” he says, “even accelerating the development of the Afghan army.” He says that the ratio is something he’ll keeping an eye on “as our assessment goes forward.”

Flournoy says that in the crucial areas it’s closer to the field manual’s advised ratio. “The concentration [of the insurgency] south and into the east” of Afghanistan,” she says. “When looking at the troops required on our side, our allies, Afghan troops, police and security forces, we were trying to concentrate efforts on the insurgency belt in the south and east to get to those kinds of ratios in the areas where insurgency is strongest.”

She doesn’t say what the ratio is and will be there, though, and Begich requests an answer down the road.

Petraeus did say that he included that ratio in the field manual as a matter of “intellectual honesty,” so there was a concrete measurement. Following his lead, then, I’d like to apologize publicly to radio host Christiane Brown of KJFK in Nevada. I appeared on her show on Monday and downplayed the field manual’s measurement in response to a point she made. I was wrong to do so and hereby apologize.