White House Press Corps.org: White House Press Briefing by Tony Fratto 4/7/08 (General Petraeus Iraq Testimony)

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White House Press Briefing by Tony Fratto 4/7/08 (General Petraeus Iraq Testimony)
— Monday, April 07, 2008 —

MR. FRATTO: Yes, Helen.

Q You acted like the President wouldn't know what Petraeus and Crocker are going to testify. Do you mean he's going to be surprised tomorrow --

MR. FRATTO: No, I hope I didn't leave --

Q -- when they say the surge is working and all?

MR. FRATTO: No, I hope I didn't leave that impression. I think he has a good sense of what the thinking of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker is. Obviously they speak on a fairly regular basis and the President is briefed by General Petraeus. And he's also briefed by lots of --

Q But he's the President, isn't he calling the policy? I mean, we don't have President Petraeus, do we? We have President --

MR. FRATTO: No, we don't. We have commander Petraeus, who is running the operations on the ground in Iraq and he's closest to the military operations. He knows the capabilities of his forces, the coalition forces, and what the Iraqi security forces can do, and has a good sense of what's needed to complete his mission. And it's a mission that he designed. So we want to look forward to his testimony and hear how he thinks it's going and what the requirements are to complete that mission for the remainder of the year.

Q What is the mission?

MR. FRATTO: Well, it's pretty clear, says to bring -- is to bring --

Q Are you asking -- to continue the occupation of Iraq?

MR. FRATTO: -- security in Iraq, sufficient security, so that the political leadership can continue to make gains. And they've made some very impressive gains, whether it's with the budget and reconstruction funding and the Baathist legislation and provincial elections. These are all very, very important elements of political reconciliation in Iraq. We'd like to see more. We want to see more action on oil revenue law. And so there's more to be done.

We're going to keep a very close eye on implementation of the laws that have been passed. But I think it's clear General Petraeus's mission was to reduce violence in Baghdad and in Iraq, more broadly, and I think it's hard to deny -- it would be hard for anybody to deny that he hasn't been successful in that mission.

Now, we know that it's a -- the reduction of violence is fragile and it's reversible, but we like the trend and we like what the Iraqi political leadership has shown about their ability to take action.

Q And paying off 90,000 Iraqis not to fight?

MR. FRATTO: Kathleen.

Labels: General Petraeus, Helen, Iraq, Middle East, President Bush, Press Briefing, Tony Fratto, White House Press Corps

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