White House Press Corps.org: Press Briefing by Homeland Security Advisor Frances Fragos Townsend 09/26/06 (Topic: National Intelligence Estimate)

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Press Briefing by Homeland Security Advisor Frances Fragos Townsend 09/26/06 (Topic: National Intelligence Estimate)
— Tuesday, September 26, 2006 —

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Q Fran, I wanted to just follow up on George's question before on -- and particularly focus in on Iraq, in that regard. Every time Iraq comes up in this, you've responded, the President has responded, it's the central front, and therefore, it is integral to terrorism. But another way to read these key judgments is that the order in which we took these things made a difference and that one might conclude from this, though it does not explicitly state it in any way here, that had we not done Iraq first, had we stayed for a while to do Afghanistan or focused on Iran first or something else, that you might not have created what they refer to here as the Iraqi jihad movement that has attracted so much motion.

That, the President doesn't go to, not the question of whether Iraq is or is not, but whether it was -- whether it has, itself, because of it's timing, turned the tide somewhat against us. Can you address that?

MS. TOWNSEND: Sure. David, first, let me start with the notion of the central front in the war on terror. What's -- forget what the -- put aside for the moment what the President has said, because he's been clear about the administration's view. Let's look at what bin Laden and Zawahiri have said -- and Zarqawi -- about this being either where they're going to have ultimate victory or ultimate defeat when the President went through those -- the quotations from al Qaeda, themselves.

Q But that made that statement only after we had invaded. In other words, had we chosen to delay invasion dealing with Iraq for X number of years, would -- is it your conclusion from this that we would have avoided having to deal with an Iraqi jihad at the moment that we are dealing with all of the other elements of this problem?

MS. TOWNSEND: Two points. First I would say to you, it presumes that when you say, the order of things, that we can't do more than one thing at a time. And as we know, we're fighting in Afghanistan while we're fighting in Iraq. Second, what I would say to you is, there's always an excuse. I mean, we weren't in Iraq on September the 11th when we got hit, and they hit us anyway. There are always going to be some excuse for them to propagate their hateful ideology -- whether it's the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it's the conflict in Afghanistan, it's our troop presence in the Gulf -- there's always an excuse. And so I think that that's not -- I just don't think that holds weight.

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