Press Releases 2008

White House Press Briefing, December 8, 2008

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_________________________________________________________________

For Immediate Release                            December 8, 2008

PRESS BRIEFING
BY
PRESS SECRETARY DANA PERINO
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

A preview of tomorrow's speech for you.  The President will discuss up at West Point two main topics:  the changes in our military strategy since 2001, and the changes in the military, itself.

He will give an update on the progress we are making in carrying out this strategy in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere.

Q    Dana, a couple developments in Pakistan.  The Pakistan government moved in to detain or arrest one of the Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders that Mumbai blames for the attacks.  But separately, hundreds of militants have torched hundreds of NATO vehicles destined for the conflict in Afghanistan.  Is there a mixed message being sent by Pakistan here?  Do you think the arrest is a credible sign that they're ready to tackle the problem?  And do you think they need to take better steps to protect NATO vehicles?

MS. PERINO:  I think there's no doubt that Pakistan has made -- taken some positive steps.  We've seen the reports; I'll decline to comment on them in detail.  But what I will tell you what's critically important now is that we continue to work together -- the Indians, the Pakistanis, the United States and our allies -- to prevent follow-on attacks after the attacks in Mumbai.  That's what we are continuing to focus on.

And as to the second part of your question, I don't know if you could say that those things are related or not, and I'll have to refer you to the Defense Department as they continue to investigate that incident.

Q    When you mentioned follow-on attacks, does that mean you have credible indications that there are some in the making?

MS. PERINO:  I wouldn't say that.  I would just tell you that it's always a concern once you have a terrorist attack that one of the things that you want to learn as quickly as possible is all the information you can get in order to prevent follow-on attacks, because we know that that's how some of these terrorists plan.

And rooting out terrorists is very hard work.  It requires a sustained commitment.  We've seen that in our country.  It's going to take a sustained commitment on behalf of the Pakistanis, the Afghanis, and the Indians, and all the other nations working together to root out the evil.

Q    Do you expect that to come up in today's trip to the DNI and the counterterrorism center?

MS. PERINO:  Will the President be briefed on it?

Q    Yes.

MS. PERINO:  I'm sure that it will come up, sure.

Q    Do you think he's likely to hear the report out of London that the Taliban now control 72 percent of Afghanistan, whereas last year they controlled about half of it?

MS. PERINO:  I haven't heard that statistic.  We can check on it for you and if -- I don't know what the source is, do you?

Q    It's a London think tank.

MS. PERINO:  Yes, well, I think that he'll get his briefings from NCTC.

Q    But certainly things are getting any better.

MS. PERINO:  Well, in Afghanistan we do have a challenge.  And we always knew that it was going to take longer in Afghanistan than it was going to in Iraq to get things done.  We have been working on our Afghan strategic review.  We are nearing conclusion on it.  We intend to pass our findings to the new team, as any policy adaptations would take place under their watch.  This is a good example of our efforts to ensure a smooth transition and to set the new team on a solid footing when it comes to Afghanistan.

There are many different things that the President has already said that we were going to do and are currently implementing.  Back on September 9th of 2008, which seems a little bit -- a year ago, but it was just two months ago that the President announced that more troops would be headed into Afghanistan.  In fact, one Marine battalion that was going to be going to Iraq actually was diverted and they went to Afghanistan.  Our NATO meeting last week that Secretary Rice attended focused almost exclusively on Afghanistan and the work that we all need to do together to improve coordination amongst the ISAF, as well as our crew.  And we'll have more troops continuing to go in.

And I'll see if there's more that we can provide to you in the next week or so on this Afghan strategy review, but our intention is to pass it to the next team so that they can then go from there and try to combat -- I'm not going to confirm the statistic, but combat the Taliban's resurgence.