President Bush met with a small group of conservative journalists on Friday. Kate & Rich write it up here:

Forget the leaks and the speculation, President George W. Bush is not looking for a way out of the surge and the Iraq war. In a session with about ten conservative journalists Friday afternoon, a confident and determined president made it clear that he is going to see the surge through, and will rely on General David Petraeus’s advice on how to proceed come September, regardless of the political climate in Washington. He scoffed at reports to the contrary in the press. When specifically asked about a Washington Post article this week reporting that his administration is looking for a way to draw down, President Bush said dismissively, “I didn’t read it,” and then, “there are a lot of talkers in Washington.” When it was pointed out that the sources were people in his administration, he repeated, just as dismissively, “That’s what I said, there are a lot of talkers.” He said that not everyone gets to talk to him: “I’m not on the phone chatting up with these people writing these articles, ascribing motives to me.” The president made his intentions clear Friday afternoon. He’s not going to abandon the surge, despite all the talk of his administration being willing to move to the Iraq Study Group model of the Iraq war. He views “this period as fundamental for deciding whether or not this nation is going to be secure throughout a lot of the 21st century. And therefore when it comes to the war in Iraq, as you know, I made a decision not to leave but to put more in, and I will support our troops and support Gen. Petraeus, his plan.” “The ideal world,” he adds, “is that there would be some bipartisan consensus at some point in time to be there for a while. Can we achieve that? I don’t know. It’s worth trying. It’s worth talking to people about it.” But referring back to his statements in support of the surge, he said, with emphasis in his voice, “It’s very important for you all to understand that that’s exactly what I mean.”

Read it all — including his amazement at some of the questions he got yesterday — here.