Talk Radio News Service: News, Politics, Media

By Victoria Jones - Talk Radio News Service

Afghanistan
Robert Gibbs said the President talked on Sunday afternoon by phone with Secretary Clinton, met last night at 5 pm at the Oval Office with Secretary Gates, Admiral Mullen, Gens. Cartwright and Petraeus, National Security Advisor General Jim Jones and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

The President communicated his final decision on the strategy, and issued orders on the strategy’s implementation. After that meeting in the Oval Office, the President held a similar meeting by secure video teleconference in the situation room with General McChrystal and Ambassador Eikenberry in Afghanistan at 6 pm.

The President believes the situation in this region is a shared international challenge. Building on the work he has been doing in this regard, including productive calls last Wednesday morning with Prime Minister Berlusconi of Italy, the President will be in close consultation with friends and allies throughout the day today.

The President spoke this morning with President Sarkozy. He will meet with Prime Minister Rudd and discuss our strategy moving forward as well as the economy and climate change. He will not ask for more troops from the Australians as they have increased their contributions throughout the spring to a level the US is quite pleased with. He spoke at noon with President Medvedev, and will speak at 1 pm over secure
video teleconference with Prime Minister Brown. Many of the calls will be to update leaders on the process that has gone into this. Conversations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and President Zardari will either happen later today or tomorrow. The President is not yet getting overly specific with foreign leaders as to the number of troops he will send.

Consultations with Congress will continue throughout today and tomorrow in the run up to the speech. The President continued to work through the weekend primarily with Ben Rhodes on tomorrow night’s West Point speech.

Tomorrow afternoon at 4.45 pm a bipartisan group - so far about 31 names, maybe more - will gather at the White House with leadership, as well as a number of the committees of jurisdiction. Today, tomorrow, and in this meeting there will be consultations with Congress on strategy.

Gibbs said the President and his team have ensured that there are benchmarks for progress, whether it is on the training or governance side.

Gibbs declined to respond to requests for troop number increases.

In tomorrow night’s speech, the President will reiterate the limits on our resources, both from a manpower perspective and budgetary perspective, and he will say this is not an open ended commitment. The goal of the strategy is to train an Afghan national security force comprised of the Afghan national army and police that can fight an unpopular insurgency in Afghanistan, so we can transfer that responsibility back to them. This is not open-ended.

A big part of this policy is ensuring that the Taliban in Afghanistan are not capable of providing a safe haven for al Qaeda that existed prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The President will discuss that in the importance of why we are there, Gibbs said.

Gibbs was asked if the President would talk about what success would look like in Afghanistan. He replied that he would go through why we are there, what this process brought about, and outline what he hopes to achieve there.

Gibbs was asked if the President would address human rights in Afghanistan, particularly the condition of women and girls, in his speech tomorrow night. He said that he would have to check the speech on that.

Asked if there would be an embargoed copy of the speech made available to the press ahead of the speech, Gibbs said that at 7.30 tomorrow it was their hope to put out a full embargoed text.

Asked if there was a point at which they could just not afford the war anymore, Gibbs said from a broader perspective the President has many concerns about long term debt and the deficit. Throughout the next several weeks and into the next year and beyond, the President will continue to take steps to address fiscal responsibility. Health care costs are part of that fiscal responsibility. Getting the economy back in good health and creating jobs will also help the fiscal situation.

Pakistan
Gibbs said that throughout the campaign and his time here the President has been deeply engaged in improving our bilateral relationship with Pakistan, and ensuring we are working together to root out violent extremism.

Prime Minister Rudd Photo-Op
Gibbs was asked why there would not be a photo op with the press. Gibbs replied that there would be an official photo, to which the reporter pointed out that that was not the same. Gibbs said there would be two people in the photo.

Iran
Gibbs said that a number of the President’s forthcoming conversations with foreign leaders would involve discussing Iran. He said we have seen from the Board of Governors at the IAEA a clear statement from the international community in rebuke
to the activities of Iran. We have seen now purportedly the response of the Iranian government. The Iranians have clear responsibilities and obligations. Their failure to uphold these means that time is running out and failure to take those responsibilities seriously will result in further action.

Jobs Summit
Gibbs said the jobs summit is going ahead on Thursday. The President is eager to hear the private sector’s ideas and where they see the economy. It took extraordinary action at the beginning of the administration to get economic growth going, which has to happen before we can see job growth.

Asked what the real purpose was of having a community event to talk about jobs, Gibbs said they were happy to get ideas and suggestions from anybody. Wisdom is not the dominion of Washington.

Secret Service Investigation - Salahis
Gibbs said as best he knew the Secret Service continues to look into that situation, and when there is something complete, they will have it.