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From Tony Snow's press gaggle today. Way to go, Tony!

[There] is a letter that was sent to the President by Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, by about 10 of them. In one sense, we welcome the letter because it actually serves as a reiteration and ratification of many of the things the administration is doing. Now, what happened is that the 10 members urged four courses of action for the President. ... .
One, transitioning the U.S. mission in Iraq to counterterrorism training, logistics and force protection. Second, working with Iraqi leaders to disarm the militias and develop a broad based and sustainable political settlement. And, third, convening an international conference and contact group to support a political settlement in Iraq. I've left out some of the verbiage, but you've all seen the letter.
Those are all three things that we've been doing, and I will give you a little bit of chapter and verse in a moment. There is a fourth condition, which was beginning the phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq before the end of this year ...
... a phased redeployment doesn't make sense unless you have a reason for doing so. We want to see the troops come home, but we want to see the troops come home under the proper circumstances, which is successful completion of the task of helping the Iraqi democracy stand up, defend itself and sustain itself.
... one other point, which is, there is a reiteration of a call to replace or have Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stand down. The President strongly supports the Defense Secretary. It's not going to happen. Creating Don Rumsfeld as a boogeyman may make for good politics, but would make for a lousy strategy at this time. And, furthermore, if you listen to the speech that Secretary Rumsfeld gave last week, it was not only thoughtful, but comprehensive about trying to frame the ongoing war against terror, and also the war going on in Iraq and Afghanistan.
... the President would love to see members of both Houses of Congress returning to that sense of cooperation we had after September 11th, where the real goal was not to try to hand out pink slips at the Pentagon, but instead to win the war on terror in a way that is going to make not only America safer, but also the rest of the world safer so that democracy can take firm root throughout the globe.
Click the link, directly above, for the rest of Tony's remarks.

Gretchen, thanks for the early Dose! And, thanks, very much for posting Tony Snow's comments! I'm thrilled to read that the President is standing up for Sec. Rumsfeld.
I called the White House today to thank the President for his OUTSTANDING speech today. He was GREAT! I also asked that he support Sec. Rumsfeld who was right on the mark on his comments about appeasers.

I hope the President continues to talk about the facts he included in today's speech. These facts should help Americans to wake up and realize "talking" to our enemies will not help as the Democrats seem to believe...