Press Briefing by Tony Snow, September 10, 2007
Q For months the White House has been saying, wait until September, wait until September. It's here now. It seems like the message is: surge is working, starting to work, give it more time. So is this really more about kicking the can down the road another six months, wait till the spring, and you're going to just keep kind of running up the clock?
MR. SNOW: I don't -- number one, what we've said is, wait until September so you can see if the surge is working. And every network here has been reporting that in significant ways the surge is working. It's not kicking the can down the road, that's trying to have a factual assessment of a change in policy that the President outlined in the State of the Union address and also in an address to the nation, and that became the focus of a shift in military and on-the-ground strategy. It is clear that there have been in fact some positive results from that. So I don't think you -- I think it's a little glib to try to characterize it as kicking the can down the road.
Furthermore, again, you're asking me to make preemptive characterizations of what might come out of congressional testimony that I haven't seen. We're going to have to wait to see --
Q The President has already been briefed by Petraeus and Crocker, you're not going to be shocked by what they say.
MR. SNOW: No, probably not, but on the other hand, again, I'm just not going to leak to try and to draw characterizations because, again, they're going to be asked to give their independent assessments of what's going on.
The question now is, is the surge producing results? You saw a number of lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, coming back after their -- during their time off last month and saying that they were -- that they were very impressed by especially the military progress they had seen and also the so-called bottom-up, the grassroots change in attitude; what had happened with tribal leaders who a year ago were shooting at Americans, have now embraced them and said, your blood and our blood are co-mingled here, we're part of the same plight.
Q People are dying everyday.
MR. SNOW: And it's -- so it's a consequence, Ed. The real question for Congress is, how do you assess this? Rather than kicking the can down the road, it is now an opportunity to say to Congress, you have obligations as well in terms of assessing the situation and figuring out what you're going to do.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/09/20070910-3.html