REP. RYAN: Let me bring some -- let me try and illustrate the issue here, because I think this -- it can get a little confusing. We’ve all met with General Allen and General Scaparotti in Afghanistan to talk about fighting seasons. Here’s the way it works. The mountain passes fill in with snow. The Taliban and the terrorists and the Haqqani and the Quetta shura come over from Pakistan to fight our men and women. When it fills in with snow, they can’t do it. That’s what we call fighting seasons. In the warm months fighting gets really high; in the winter it goes down.

And so when Admiral Mullen and General Petraeus came to Congress and said, if you pull these people out before the fighting season is end, it puts people more at risk -- that’s the problem. Yes, we drew 22,000 troops down last month. But the remaining troops that are there, who still have the same mission to prosecute, counterinsurgency, are doing it with fewer people.

That makes them less safe.

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: (Inaudible.)

REP. RYAN: We’re sending fewer people out in all these hot spots to do the same job that they were supposed to do a month ago --

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Because we turned it over --

REP. RYAN: -- but we took 22,000 people out for them to do it.

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: -- we turned it over to the Afghan troops we trained. No one got pulled out that didn’t get filled in by trained Afghan personnel. And he’s -- he’s -- he’s conflating two issues. The fighting season that Petraeus was talking about and former -- and Admiral Mullen was the fighting season this spring. That’s what he was talking about. We did not -- we did not pull them out.

REP. RYAN: The calendar works the same every year. (Chuckles.)

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: It does work the same every year. (Inaudible) -- there --

REP. RYAN: (Chuckles.) Spring, summer, fall -- (chuckles) -- it’s warm or it’s not. They’re still fighting us, they’re still coming over the passes, they’ll -- they’re still coming in to Zabul or to Kunar, to all of these areas, but we are sending fewer people to the front to fight them. And that is not safe.

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: That’s right, because that’s the Afghan responsibility. We’ve trained them.

REP. RYAN: Not in the East.

MS. RADDATZ: Let’s move -- let’s move to another war.

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Not in the East? (Inaudible) --

REP. RYAN: (Inaudible) -- East, RC-East --

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: RC-East, most dangerous place in the world.

REP. RYAN: That’s why -- that’s why we don’t want to send fewer people to do the job.

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: That’s -- that’s why we should send Americans in to do the job instead of the -- you’d rather Americans be going in and doing the job instead of -- (inaudible) --

REP. RYAN: No. We are already sending Americans to do the job --

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: No --

REP. RYAN: -- but fewer of them. That’s the whole point.

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: That -- that’s right. We’re sending in more Afghans to do the job, Afghans to do the job.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/us/politics/full-transcript-of-the-vice-presidential-debate.html