MR. SNOW: I'm going to the lunch, that's why we're not doing the briefing -- because after that, then we get into trying to do a briefing at 4:00 p.m., and that's not going to work for us. A couple of other things. One story that made several broadcasts and also the news, and I thought I would go ahead and respond to it, is a letter that was sent to the President by Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, by about 10 of them. In one sense, we welcome the letter because it actually serves as a reiteration and ratification of many of the things the administration is doing. Now, what happened is that the 10 members urged four courses of action for the President. I will list three of them at the outset. One, transitioning the U.S. mission in Iraq to counterterrorism training, logistics and force protection. Second, working with Iraqi leaders to disarm the militias and develop a broad based and sustainable political settlement. And, third, convening an international conference and contact group to support a political settlement in Iraq. I've left out some of the verbiage, but you've all seen the letter. Those are all three things that we've been doing, and I will give you a little bit of chapter and verse in a moment. There is a fourth condition, which was beginning the phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq before the end of this year -- I'll get to that in a moment. But let me give you a little bit of detail on the first three. Beginning with transitioning the mission in Iraq to counterterrorism training, logistics and force protection -- that, in fact, is precisely what we have been doing. When you talk about training Iraqi forces, Iraqi forces are engaged primarily in counterterrorism. We've seen them taking the lead in some of the fights in Baghdad and elsewhere. One of the reasons is it's well-known that Iraqis sometimes are going to get better intelligence than Americans and they're going to be effective at doing counterterrorism and force protection action. For the last three years we've seen substantial success in training up those forces, and it's increasing. As a matter of fact, one of the reports mentioned by the Democratic leaders, the Defense Department report to Congress, "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq," mentions the training successes, and I believe General Casey had some fairly optimistic things to say about the training last week. In addition, when it comes to counterterrorism operations, it also reflects the fact that we understand that Iraq is a central focus to the war on terror. And I think that's also something that is implicit within this letter, that it's absolutely vital to win the war against terror. And you do that, first, by allowing democracy to stand up in Iraq. The second point, working with leaders to disarm militias and develop a broad-based and sustainable political settlement -- again, implicit in that is the importance of a successful democracy. But also, we have, in fact, been working with the Iraqi leaders to disarm militias. That is something that was mentioned when we made our trip to Baghdad. It's also something that Prime Minister Maliki has made one of his key priorities. In addition, the Prime Minister has talked about political reconciliation. There are two ways of dealing with counterterrorism. One is to say to terrorists, you've got to make a choice. You can take the violent path, or, you have the opportunity and the option, as well, of going the political route. And there has been every opportunity -- or there's been a continuing effort to make sure that the political path has been made available to one and all. As for amending the constitution, which was one of the recommendations, that's something the Iraqi people can do. There's the suggestion of amending the constitution for equitable power-sharing. Prime Minister Maliki, again, has talked about that. There's an amendment process, and the Iraqis will move forward on that. Finally, in terms of "new direction," talks about convening an international conference and contact group. Return again to the trip to Baghdad, where it was announced that there would be an international compact between Iraq, with the mediation of the United Nations to get other nations in as donors and supporters of Iraq, not only for economic investment, but also rebuilding infrastructure and creating some of the basis for a stable and successful political regime and democratic political regime. So having said all that, the new directions document really does, in fact, support what the President has been saying. And I'm glad that the leaders have taken notice of this. As far as the phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq before the end of the year, I'm looking at my watch and it says it's September 5th. Anybody who understands the way redeployments go understands if you're talking about a phased redeployment, at least according to these folks, they'd have to start cutting orders yesterday. But, in fact, a phased redeployment doesn't make sense unless you have a reason for doing so. We want to see the troops come home, but we want to see the troops come home under the proper circumstances, which is successful completion of the task of helping the Iraqi democracy stand up, defend itself and sustain itself. One other note, this does not apply to all the signatories of the letter -- but it is interesting to note -- and I think it provides an opportunity for Democrats to express themselves on how we move forward in the war on terror, and that is going to be something that we're going to be discussing throughout the week. There have been some in the Democratic Party who have argued against the Patriot Act, against the terror surveillance program, against Guantanamo. In other words, there are some people who say that we shouldn't fight the war, we should not detain -- we shouldn't apprehend al Qaeda, we shouldn't detain al Qaeda, we shouldn't question al Qaeda, and we shouldn't listen to al Qaeda. In other words, they're all for winning the war on terror, but they're all against -- they're against providing the tools for winning that war. And we think it's a perfect opportunity for Democratic leaders to say, no, we are serious about winning the war. We have now reiterated some of the basic precepts of administration policy and also the policy put together by generals over the months of the engagement in Iraq. And we look forward to working with members of Congress to figure out how best to prevent terrorists from coming here, but, more importantly, how to defeat terrorism. And we're going to talk with Fran about that in a minute. Finally, one other point, which is, there is a reiteration of a call to replace or have Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stand down. The President strongly supports the Defense Secretary. It's not going to happen. Creating Don Rumsfeld as a boogeyman may make for good politics, but would make for a lousy strategy at this time. And, furthermore, if you listen to the speech that Secretary Rumsfeld gave last week, it was not only thoughtful, but comprehensive about trying to frame the ongoing war against terror, and also the war going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. So this, again, is something that the President would love to see members of both Houses of Congress returning to that sense of cooperation we had after September 11th, where the real goal was not to try to hand out pink slips at the Pentagon, but instead to win the war on terror in a way that is going to make not only America safer, but also the rest of the world safer so that democracy can take firm root throughout the globe. Having said that, let me just mention -- and you have all received PDFs, and we're going to try to get your hard copies of this, which is the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism. Just a couple of brief notes, then I'm going to ask Fran to come up and answer questions because she has much more specific and comprehensive knowledge than I. But this is a follow-on document to one that was originally published in February of 2003. Since February of 2003, obviously, we have come a long way in the war on terror, and the enemy has also responded in numerous ways. To the charge that somehow this administration is staying the course, we are going to be laying out ways just to remind people that, far from staying the course, we have been trying to respond vigorously, aggressively, with ingenuity and with determination, using any and all means at our disposal, and also cooperation with members of the international community, to foil terrorists who constantly change their tactics, change their aims and even change some of the arguments that they have educed for trying to go after people who are guilty of committing the sin of trying to live in free societies. This document lays out a long-term strategy which is democracy and freedom. It also lays out short-term strategies, in terms of going after the lifeblood of terrorism. That includes the ideological battle, where the Internet and the media are central battlefields, where there's an attempt to try to shape public perceptions of what's going on, and also to build adherence throughout the world. There is finance, where we have been working to sort of choke off the ability of terrorists to gain the finance that they need to go ahead and commit acts of terror. It means going after some of the ideological presuppositions -- make the argument -- have it so that people around the world are going to say, no, we don't want you anymore, we don't want you here. We've already seen the people of Iraq do it with an election. We do not want to make the argument that there are people who will always and eternally be our enemies. We have seen Iraq and Libya in the last few years move from the terrorist watch list to being some of our aides and supporters in conducting the war on terror, and we invite one and all to join not only the war against terror, but for democracy. There are many more nuances to the report, but rather than going through them all -- and I think most of you at least now had an opportunity to take a look at it, I'd like to invite Fran up. Here's how we're going to work it, I would like to have questions directed toward Fran on this, exhaust all the questions, and then we'll move on to other topics that are of interest to you. Fran. MS. TOWNSEND: I thought I would take a moment to sort of set the stage of what you can expect in the President's speech this morning -- this afternoon. You will hear the President talk about the goals, the objectives and the strategic intent of al Qaeda, in their own words and the way they describe their strategic intent. The President will address both the issues of Sunni extremism -- we talk about al Qaeda, but al Qaeda is one and probably the most prominent example of the Sunni extremist element, but they have their affiliates and there are others. So the President will talk about Sunni extremism. He will also talk about Shia extremism. Let's remember that Hezbollah, prior to September 11th, was responsible for the deaths of more Americans than any other terrorist group. There's the '83 Beirut barracks bombing, which was responsible for the murder of 241 United States Marines, and then the '96 attack on Khobar Towers, killing 19 American military. And so the President will talk about that. He will talk about state sponsorship. We have less state sponsors of terrorism today than we did at the beginning of the President's first term. That said, the state sponsorship of terrorism as a tool to execute and implement foreign policy objectives is unacceptable, and the President will speak to that. We have enjoyed many successes in the war on terror. We've heard the President say often that we are safer, but not yet safe. We are denying terrorists safe havens. We have captured and killed their leaders. We have disrupted finances. We've made it difficult for them to move, to travel, to communicate. We've taken advantage of their travel and communications. They can no longer operate freely. But there is a great deal left to be done, which bring us, really, to the point of looking at the strategy. Tony quite rightly said that the enemy has evolved, and we define the enemy and the strategy as a transnational terrorist movement of extremist organizations, networks and individuals, including their state and non-state supporters, which have two things in common -- first, that they exploit Islam; and, second, that they use terrorism to achieve their ideological ends. We look at -- we talk about both the long-term and the short-term? The long-term you heard Tony allude to about the long-term antidote to terrorism is freedom and democracy. But how do we attack it, how do we defeat it in the short-term. There are a number of things laid out in the report -- I'd summarize this in a way, of course, our first priority is to prevent attacks. But how do you do that? Well, what you look at is, what is the terrorist organization's vulnerabilities? Well, their vulnerabilities are those things that they absolutely need to operate and survive. We break that down: You need leadership, you need foot soldiers, you need money, you need communications, you need weapons. And so what you do is you look for various ways to attack their vulnerabilities. And on defense, we have established the -- the President and the reorganization of the federal government, established the Department of Homeland Security. We have -- one of their critical responsibilities is to defend targets. We have put all sorts of measures in place to make it more difficult for them to not only travel around the world, but certainly to enter the United States. We have undertaken efforts to protect critical infrastructure. And on the weapons front, the report talks about, in greater detail than I think we've made public before, our efforts to deny terrorists access and use of WMD, and the importance of that strategy -- to deter their use, to prevent an attack, to deny them access to materials, to disrupt their ability to move those materials about. And then, lastly, really, is the denial of sanctuary and support; that is, we cannot let a terrorist organization take control of a country again, like happened in Afghanistan. We cannot -- and we must hold responsible those who not only would give them such safe haven, but those that would provide sanctuary from which a terrorist can operate. And the President has been clear that we will hold those who provide them sanctuary responsible just as we do the terrorists, themselves. Now, safe havens come in many forms. I think mostly we think of them as being physical, but they are not just physical. We must look to eradicate legal safe havens -- that is where there are legal regimes, we must work with those host governments. We must deny them the uncontested use of cyberspace and the Internet. And we have made great strides in denying them use of international financial systems. So you've got the document. You will hear the President's speech later today in far greater detail than I've given you. But with that I think I'll turn it over and take your questions. I should tell you, I also have with me my deputy for combating terrorism, Juan Zarate, and Senior Director, Dr. Michele Malvesti, both of whom worked with me on the report.

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