Text of Bush, Karzai News Conference

AP/SFgate.com ^ | Sept. 26, 2006

[rightinthemiddle]

snip;

We're not going to let lies and propaganda by the enemy dictate how we win this war.

Now, you know what's interesting about the NIE? It was an intelligence report done last April. As I understand, the conclusions — the evidence on the conclusions reached was stopped being gathered on February — at the end of February.

And here we are coming down the stretch in an election campaign and it's on the front page of your newspapers. Isn't that interesting? Somebody's taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes.

I talked to John Negroponte today, the DNI. You know, I think it's a bad habit for our government to declassify every time there's a leak, because it means it's going to be hard to get good product out of our analysts. Those of you who've been around here long enough know what I'm talking about.

But once again there's a leak out of our government, coming right down the stretch in this campaign in order to create confusion in the minds of the American people.

In my judgment, that's why they leaked it.

And so we're going to — I told the DNI to declassify this document. You can read it for yourself. It will stop all the speculation, all the politics about somebody saying something about Iraq; you know, somebody trying to confuse the American people about the nature of this enemy.

And so John Negroponte, the DNI, is going to declassify the document as quickly as possible — declassify the key judgments for you to read yourself.

[rightinthemiddle]

I've snipped the part about W declassifying the NIE.

[ClaireSolt]

8 months old!

[kellynla]

Thanks for posting.

[100-Fold_Return]

The President is a real coyboy!!!

[TexasPatriot8]

AWESOME comments from both Bush and Karzai! I LOVED hearing that! It was great. If anyone has an audiofile of their comments, please FReepmail the url to me. Thanks. :)

[Catholic Iowan]

"Even after hearing that one of the major conclusions of the national intelligence estimate in April was that the Iraq war has fueled terror growth around the world, why have you continued to say that the Iraq war has made this country safer?"

I guess it's ok to ask tough questions of President Bush, but President Bubba got upset when asked why he didn't do more to get Bin Laden. The difference is President Bush isn't afraid to tackle the question head on, while Clinton goes into denial, defensive mode. Oh, and blame everybody but himself mode.