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Press Gaggle 08/11/06 (Topic: Politics of Anti-Terrorism)
— Friday, August 11, 2006 —
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Q Tony, you were saying that Harry Reid was politicizing these arrests and Democrats are saying that the White House, President Bush is politicizing this. There's a bunch of issues coming up in Congress pretty soon. Is there a way to have this debate without it getting overwhelmed by politics?

MR. SNOW: Well, it strikes me -- by the way, I said, it sounds like Senator Reid, I believe, is politicizing, because, look, it seems to me that the name-calling doesn't get us anywhere, does it? It's getting kind of boring. And I think what you want to do here is answer the simple question: How do we make America safe, strong and secure? What is the best way to do that?

I think one of the things that came to the fore was that surveillance activity played a very important role in revealing what was going on in Great Britain. It is important to figure out how to do surveillance properly, how to be able to get information out of people who are threatening to do us harm, and it is important to use every asset at our disposal to fight the war on terror effectively.

I don't know, in today's congressional climate whether we can do this. I hope we can, because there have been times where Democrats and Republicans have worked together very constructively to get things done that are going to make it possible for law enforcement and other officials to be able to track down bad guys and to respond to them in a way that saves American lives, and also to discourage terror. That is the ultimate goal, and that's what the President has been pushing all along, and that's certainly something that we hope is going to continue to be the case.

Again, it's a political year, so I expect people to make statements. But I hope -- the most important statement people can make is to work together in harmony to demonstrate to the American people that all hands are on deck when it comes to fighting and winning the war on terror.

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