{"id":10456,"date":"2007-04-09T13:12:47","date_gmt":"2007-04-09T17:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10456.html"},"modified":"2007-04-09T13:12:47","modified_gmt":"2007-04-09T17:12:47","slug":"lieberman-pulls-a-cheney-on-pelosi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/lieberman-pulls-a-cheney-on-pelosi\/","title":{"rendered":"Lieberman pulls a Cheney on Pelosi"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am so spectacularly tired of debunking the right’s absurd attacks on Speaker Pelosi’s Syria trip that I promised not to do anymore posts on the subject. But Joe Lieberman’s nonsense<\/a> yesterday requires just one more visit to the subject.<\/p>\n

[Yesterday] on CNN, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) said he “strongly disagrees” with Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) bipartisan delegation to Syria, calling it a “mistake” and “bad for the United States of America.”<\/p>\n

Lieberman added, “I say this because we’re in a war. We’re in a war against the Islamic terrorists who attacked us on 9-11-01.” CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer responded, “But they had nothing to do with 9-11.” Lieberman dodged the issue and changed topics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, it was telling that it took Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), of all people, to step in and defend Pelosi<\/a>. On the same CNN program, Specter, who has made a series of trips to Syria in recent years, said, “She has a very prominent constitutional role in determining what’s going to happen in the Iraq war. I don’t think it is helpful for people in the administration to characterize her as being engaged in, quote ‘bad behavior,’ unquote.”<\/p>\n

Regardless, Lieberman’s smear seemed unusually inane, even by his standards. Indeed, his comments were transparently<\/i> wrong, with no real foundation in reality. The president knew<\/a> about Pelosi’s trip in advance; an administration official participated in the discussion at Damascus; Republican lawmakers also traveled to Syria and met with Assad; Pelosi’s message from Israel could play a helpful diplomatic role, and the line the Speaker took with the Syrians reinforced<\/em><\/a> Bush administration policy. (And let’s not even bother with Syria’s role in 9\/11.)<\/p>\n

So, why make blatantly bogus attacks on national television? Because as Ezra explained<\/a> very well today, the push-back against Pelosi isn’t really about Syria or last week’s trip.
\n<\/p>\n

What we’re really seeing here is a side battle of the Iraq funding fight; Bush is trying to weaken Pelosi on foreign policy issues in advance of his veto. Lieberman, too, is trying to paint those he disagrees with as weak, untrustworthy, and ill-informed on terror, a particularly rich approach given that his attacks betray an utter incomprehension of who we’re actually at war with and who attacked us on 9\/11. And so it goes, that’s politics. <\/p>\n

But this issue isn’t complicated. Bush and the State Department both knew about Pelosi’s trip. Dozens of members of Congress have gone to Syria and met with Assad; none of them have faced criticism for the act. Bush discovered a newfound problem with the trip when some advisors suggested there’d be an opening to put Democrats on the defensive by pretending to protect the traditional powers of the presidency and create a false proxy war over Congress’s ability to interfere with his foreign policy. Lieberman also doesn’t want Congress employing oversight against Bush, and so was willing to go all 2003 on us and mendaciously equate Syria to 9\/11. Everyone’s got their own games here, but just about none of them have to do with Syria, or even Pelosi’s trip. That’s just pretext.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Excellent point. Some of Pelosi’s right-wing critics have been attacking her for trivia, such as wearing a head-scarf to a Syrian mosque, but the Bush\/Lieberman line is more sophisticated than sophomoric nonsense. It’s also equally malicious.<\/p>\n

When the House passed the Dems’ withdrawal timelines, tied to funding the war, Pelosi emerged from the fight stronger and with more stature. Going into a fight with the White House over funding (timelines vs. open-ended commitment), a resilient Speaker with a popular message was politically inconvenient.<\/p>\n

So they came up with this garbage to bring her down a peg (or two), not because the facts support their claims, but because facts are utterly irrelevant.<\/p>\n

Post Script<\/em>: By the way, am I the only one who gets the impression that Lieberman intentionally says stupid things just to annoy liberal bloggers? Or is it to test the limits of the caucus’ patience?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am so spectacularly tired of debunking the right’s absurd attacks on Speaker Pelosi’s Syria trip that I promised not to do anymore posts on the subject. But Joe Lieberman’s nonsense yesterday requires just one more visit to the subject. [Yesterday] on CNN, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) said he “strongly disagrees” with Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s […]<\/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-10456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10456","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=10456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}