NOW TO THE BUDGET – House Republican leaders are prepping conservatives this week for the possibility that the debt-reduction supercommittee might craft a deal that falls short of the mandatory $1.2 trillion in savings over 10 years. Their message: Almost anything will be better than the so-called trigger, which contains hundreds of billions of dollars in automatic Pentagon cuts that Republicans find unpalatable.

THERE’S TALK THAT THE DEAL MIGHT COUNT $1 trillion in savings from war costs that many analysts – and House GOP leaders – have denounced as an illusion. The $1 trillion figure is based on CBO projections of current war spending forward, with adjustments for inflation – most of which no one ever intended to spend in the first place. But that could be more palatable than the $600 billion in automatic cuts to DOD’s budget if the trigger is pulled.

OUR STORY BY Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan is here: http://politi.co/nrZkur

THE DEBATE OVER WHETHER THE NATION’S NUCLEAR ARSENAL should be included in the cuts has sparked a duel between Reps. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, a Democrat, and Michael Turner of Ohio, a Republican who leads the HASC Strategic Forces Subcommittee.

ON FRIDAY, TURNER WROTE HOUSE AND SENATE APPROPRIATORS seeking to restore cuts to nuclear weapons modernization funds requested by Obama in the fiscal 2012 budget. The letter, which was also circulated to members of the supercommittee, cited Panetta’s testimony Thursday to HASC opposing such cuts as harmful to national security. You can see it here: http://politi.co/o2fk9R

TURNER ALSO BOLSTERED HIS CASE with a hearing Friday at which experts detailed how both Russia and China were modernizing their nuclear arsenals.

MARKEY MEANWHILE HAD ALREADY WRITTEN a letter – co-signed by 64 other progressive lawmakers – asking the supercommittee to shave $200 billion from the nuclear weapons budget and use the money to preserve threatened domestic programs. “Cutting $200 billion over the next decade from our nuclear weapons budget will cut wasteful programs that America no longer needs and cannot afford. The doomsday that Americans fear is the day their doctor calls with the news another family member has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or cancer or ALS,” Markey told us in an email. “Our budget needs to reflect our 21st century security needs instead of funding the radioactive relics of the 20th century Cold War.” His letter is here: http://1.usa.gov/otS3cc

CIA DIRECTOR PETRAEUS PUSHED BACK AS EXPECTED against an AP story Friday that cited anonymous officials as saying he’d ordered intelligence analysts to give greater weight to troops’ opinions in their assessment of how operations in Afghanistan were progressing. After the story broke, CIA officials told reporter Kimberly Dozier that the move – which she said had prompted a flurry of criticism from within the intelligence community’s old guard – was requested by Allen and implemented by Deputy Director Mark Morrell before Petraeus was sworn in. http://bit.ly/ntHvBk

IN A STATEMENT TO CIA EMPLOYEES, PETRAEUS SAID, “An Associated Press article published today presents an inaccurate picture of my thoughts on the CIA’s Afghanistan analysis. The article asserts that a change in process introduced to enhance coordination, to get our officers even earlier access to more information, and to ensure we gain the benefit of hearing from those on the ground full-time-intelligence base chiefs, civilian experts, and military officers alike-was somehow designed to impose a military viewpoint on our analysis. That is flat wrong. … No one on the CIA leadership team has directed that our analysts pay more attention to or place more weight on the views of our military colleagues. In fact, analysts here have always taken into account the full range of opinions on Afghanistan. The change has been one of process, not substance, and it was one put in place by Michael Morell when he was Acting Director of the CIA. The change was simply this: to ask our analysts to discuss their findings with working-level ISAF officers before discussing them with the ISAF leadership-the same steps, but just in a different order.”