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Pelosi Remarks Following Meeting with President Obama on Afghanistan;

October 6, 2009

Pelosi Remarks Following Meeting with President Obama on Afghanistan

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Contact: Brendan Daly/Nadeam Elshami/Drew Hammill, 202-226-7616

Washington, D.C. - Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid held a brief press availability following a bipartisan meeting at the White House with President Obama on Afghanistan. Below are the Speaker's opening remarks followed by a question and answer session with Senator Reid:

Speaker Pelosi Opening Remarks:

â€Å"Thank you, Mr. Leader. As you said, this was a very important meeting. Here we had the Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States, calling into meet with him the leadership of the House and the Senate - bicameral, bipartisan, Chairs and Ranking Members of the Committee that address our national security interest. The President made his statement, which was a very strong one about how deliberative the process would be about making the decision, how respectful he was of the people in the room, and welcomed their suggestions both today and on an on-going basis.

â€Å"As Leader Reid mentioned, there are a four areas that must be addressed as this decision goes forth. Some of them were addressed in the McChrystal report, some of them in the metrics put forth by the Administration. Certainly, the security issue, the governance issue, the reconstruction - or as some say, the construction, because there was nothing there before in Afghanistan - and the diplomacy in the region. It is also the question of what the commitment is of our NATO allies.

â€Å"These are other subjects came up today with the diversity in the room - needless to say, there was some agreement and there was some diversity of opinion as well. But I commend the President for having the meeting, for taking the time to listen to the wealth of knowledge, again, on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of the House, on the subject of our national security.

â€Å"Our first responsibility is to protect the American people. We all take this responsibility very seriously, the President has the ultimate responsibility to make a decision and we all mourn the loss of those who make the supreme sacrifice. And my condolences to your constituent, Leader Reid, in that regard.â€

Question and Answer Session:

Q: Can you give us a spectrum of the diversity of opinions expressed in the meeting?

Speaker Pelosi. Basically we were grateful for having the meeting. We understood that it was a very serious matter, of course, that goes without saying. The question that the Leader put forth at the beginning, and General McChrystal said in this report: â€Å"Without a strategy, we shouldn't resource the mission.†So the question is: How do we evaluate the tools at our disposal? Do we have an able partner in President Karzai? Is the government capable of acting in a way that is not fraught with corruption? Those kinds of issues. And so it wasn't a question of difference of opinion, it was question of having different evaluations of the strength of the different tools at our disposal as the President goes forward, and again, as Congress plays its rightful role in all of this.

Senator Reid. Madam Speaker, the one thing that I think was interesting is that everyone, Democrats and Republicans, said that, â€Å"every decision you make we will support it.†Basically. So we will see.

Q: …if he wants 40,000 troops, that you would fund 40,000 troops, whatever decision he makes?

Senator Reid. There was a general discussion there. I hope people aren't talking in the abstract saying, â€Å"Whatever decision you make we'll support.†That came from the minority.

Q: What strategy did you lay out that you can talk about from the meeting?

Senator Reid. Well, he didn't lay out a strategy. He just said that he wants to make sure that we have a strategy before we start committing resources.

Q: Did you get a sense of when he might make a decision?

Senator Reid. No, but he made it very clear he's not going to rush into this, but he's not going to be leisurely about it at all.

Speaker Pelosi. It is a very deliberate process.

Q:….Speaker Pelosi, do you agree with what Senator Reid said about whatever decision the President makes, you will support?

Senator Reid. Well, I think that the point I was trying to make is that there is a lot of talk here. Mr. President, you are the Commander-in-Chief. The reason I mention this is all coming from the Republicans. And in the past, you know, we've had a little trouble getting supplemental bills passed, even in the prior Administration when the money goes to the military.

It will be interesting to see if their actions follow their words.

Speaker Pelosi. Let must just say that there was agreement that it's a difficult decision for the President to make, that we all respected that he was looking into every aspect of this. And that we were, again, honored in what he had to say. Whether we agreed with it or voted for it remains to be seen when we see what the President put forth. But I think there was a real display of universal respect for the manner in which he was approaching it.

Thank you all very much.