{"id":10403,"date":"2007-04-04T09:00:36","date_gmt":"2007-04-04T13:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10403.html"},"modified":"2007-04-04T09:00:36","modified_gmt":"2007-04-04T13:00:36","slug":"white-houses-pelosi-criticism-still-doesnt-make-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/white-houses-pelosi-criticism-still-doesnt-make-sense\/","title":{"rendered":"White House’s Pelosi criticism still doesn’t make sense"},"content":{"rendered":"

The [tag]Bush[\/tag] gang’s criticism of Speaker [tag]Pelosi[\/tag] for leading a congressional delegation to [tag]Syria[\/tag] was exposed several days ago as being misguided and hypocritical<\/a>. I’d hoped that reality would deter the White House from any additional nonsense on the subject.<\/p>\n

I should have known better<\/a>.<\/p>\n

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Syria on Tuesday for a visit that is seen as part of an attempt to sway Bush administration policy on Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.<\/p>\n

At the White House, President Bush criticized Ms. Pelosi’s visit, saying it sent mixed signals to the Middle East and to President Bashar’s government.<\/p>\n

“Sending delegations hasn’t worked,” Mr. Bush told reporters. “It’s just simply been counterproductive.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The president’s criticism, which follows similar comments made by other White House officials over the last several days, leaves out a few pertinent details.<\/p>\n

First, there was a Republican<\/em> congressional delegation in Syria immediately before Pelosi<\/a>. Asked if the White House was equally concerned about their trip, spokesperson Dana Perino dodged the question<\/a>. You think it’s possible that politics is driving Bush’s criticism?<\/p>\n

Second, if diplomatic outreach is a mistake, why did Bush’s State Department recently initiate<\/a> some tentative discussions with Syrian officials?<\/p>\n

And third, there’s some evidence that the Bush administration helped facilitate the Republicans’ trip at the exact same time it was criticizing the Democrats’ trip.
\n
\nGreg Sargent noted<\/a> that the chief of staff to Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-Pa.), part of a three-member delegation sent to Syria, said that the Republicans’ trip “was done in cooperation with the administration.” As Greg put it, “That would be the very same administration that has spent days and days attacking Pelosi for doing the same thing — attacks that the big news orgs have eagerly spent a great deal of time and resources amplifying.”<\/p>\n

Indeed, conservative media has been all over this, with wildly misleading reports<\/a>. CNN’s Glenn Beck characterized Pelosi’s trip to Syria as “unauthorized negotiation with our enemies” and referred to it as “Nancy’s little play date in the Middle East.” Fox News’ on-air personalities claimed that Pelosi is “helping out terrorist sponsors.”<\/p>\n

And in a surprise twist, it appears that Pelosi may be doing more than just diplomatic outreach — she may be helping deliver a message<\/a> from Israel.<\/p>\n

Bush remonstrates dastardly Nancy for her passage through Damascus, at the very time the Israelis are reportedly using her to pass a message to Bashar Assad to help avoid a possible conflagration with the Syrians. Soon, Bush will be telling Bibi Netanyahu or Avigdor Lieberman they’re wimps, and to hang Crawford tough against the ‘Palis’ or such. This is all so pitiable, isn’t it? How many more months left of this bungling amateurism and fake machismo do we have left? 22, is it? Sigh.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One last thought. The White House has insisted for days that diplomatic discussions are counterproductive and won’t produce any progress. Here’s my question: does anyone think the administration’s existing policy is working?<\/p>\n

If there’s even one angle to this story that conservatives have gotten right, I don’t see it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The [tag]Bush[\/tag] gang’s criticism of Speaker [tag]Pelosi[\/tag] for leading a congressional delegation to [tag]Syria[\/tag] was exposed several days ago as being misguided and hypocritical. I’d hoped that reality would deter the White House from any additional nonsense on the subject. I should have known better. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Syria on Tuesday for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}