In an interview with Wolf Blitzer this morning, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi demonstrated she has no intention of doing anything to end the war in Iraq:
BLITZER: Let's talk about the war in Iraq. When you became speaker, you said, “Bringing the war to an end is my highest priority as speaker.”
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER: It is.
. . . BLITZER: The war, if anything, is not only continuing, but it's expanding. There's more troops now in Iraq than there were when you became the speaker. What are you going to do about that?
PELOSI: Well, we did, when we took office, we took the majority here. We changed the debate on the war. We put a bill on the president's desk that said that we wanted the redeployment of troops out of Iraq to begin in a timely fashion and to end within a year. The president vetoed that bill.
He got quite a response to that veto, and the Republicans in the Senate then decided he was never going to get a bill on his desk again. So we have a barrier and it's important for the American people to know that while I can bring a bill to the floor in the House, it cannot be brought up in the Senate unless there's a 60 vote, now 60 votes.
He got quite a response? What the heck is Pelosi talking about? He got, FROM HER, a bill with no timetables! Who does Speaker Pelosi think she is fooling? Blitzer is not fooled:
BLITZER: But you could in the House of Representatives use your power of the purse, the money, to stop funding the war if you really wanted to.
PELOSI: I wish the speaker had all the power you just describe. I certainly could do that. That doesn't bar the minority from bringing up a funding resolution. They have their parliamentary prerogative as well.
So Madame Speaker, why not MAKE THEM USE IT! Force them to forward a motion to recommit. Then you can truthfully say Iraq is a Republican War.
BLITZER: You know your base is really frustrated. Really angry…
PELOSI: I'm frustrated myself.
BLITZER: … that this war continues. And they say you should be doing more, and that's reflected in what former Senator John Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidate, repeatedly says.
He says this. He says, “Congress must stand up to President Bush and pass a funding bill with a timetable for withdrawal. If the president vetoes that bill, Congress must send it back again and again, as many times as it takes for the president to finally get the message that he can't defy the American people.”
Why didn't you do that?
PELOSI: I completely concur. But I just said to you we did that, we sent it to the president, he vetoed it. Any further attempts to do that have been met by the 60-vote barrier in the United States Senate.
Now, I'll be the last person to give you a civics lesson about what that means. But what it does mean is that the Republicans in the Senate have now taken ownership of the war in Iraq. It was President Bush's war. And now it is the Republicans' in Congress war.
Madame Speaker, you can say that over and over again but that does not make it true. It is NOT true when a Democratic Congress chooses to continue to fund the war. It is YOUR war too now.
Blitzer asks the right question:
BLITZER: So, are you telling your angry base out there in the Democratic Party that wants to see this war over with, wants to see the U.S. troops home, that you, as speaker, there's nothing you can do, you have to just throw your hands up and say…
PELOSI: No. I didn't say that at all.
BLITZER: … given the legislative problems in the Senate and the president's stubborn refusal to back down, that there's nothing that you can do?
PELOSI: How could you have ever gotten that impression?
BLITZER: All right, well, tell us…
PELOSI: What I have said, for those who pay attention, is that we will hold this administration accountable time and time again for the conduct of this war in Iraq. I have to discuss how we went in on a false premise. That's well-known to the American people. What we do have to do is to show them every step of the way how the president is taking us farther down a path in which it is going to be harder to redeploy out of Iraq, and so whether it is…
Holding him accountable while you FUND the Debacle? Puhleeeaze. Blitzer nails Pelosi:
BLITZER: But holding the president accountable, I just want you to explain, what does that mean? Besides just complaining and holding hearings? Specifically, is there anything else you can do?
PELOSI: Well, holding hearings and the oversight that we have on the corruption in contracting in Iraq, the hearings that we're holding and the harm to the readiness of our troops that the president is causing with his obstinance in this war in Iraq.
The retired generals tell us about if we want to talk about stability in the region — and that's what we're talking abut here. How do we bring — how do we have a vision of stability in the region?
Democrats are saying our vision for stability in the region begins with the redeployment of troops out of Iraq, and the generals say you cannot have stability in the region until you deploy the troops out of Iraq.
And the generals say you cannot have stability in the region until you redeploy the troops out of Iraq.
So what we're saying is now, with what happened in the past two weeks with General Petraeus' presentation and what happened on the Webb resolution in the Senate, that the Republicans are committed to a 10-year war in Iraq with the highest level of troop presence there, with permanent bases.
The Democrats are proposing a redeployment out of Iraq, a greatly diminished mission there, out of the civil war, protect our diplomats and protect our troops who are there, fight the Al Qaida.
And if we have to train the troops — if we have to continue to train the Iraqi security forces, we can do — it doesn't have to be in country and it doesn't have to be all-American. That can be done out of country.
So we're talking about a greatly diminished force there and a redeployment that's safe and responsible within the next year. The president is talking about 10 years and then after that, a Korea-like presence in perpetuity. That's the choice.
Blah, blah blah blah, blsh. She could have just answered “yes,” all Dems in Congress are going to do is talk. Pathetic performance by Pelosi.
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But this is so pathetic. I am pissed.
When did the legislative branch now led by the Democrats give up their Constitutional Right as a Co-Equal branch of government?
but he put the funding question to Rahm Emanuel, and Rham lied in his answer by saying that defunding wouldn’t get the troops out.
She sucked worse than I would have thought possible.
This is particularly noxious:
Yes Nancy, you keep telling yourself that. At least then, maybe one person would believe you.
A – sometimes your typos are so perfect they defy the rules of physics. You had one here, but you fixed it already! I coulda sworn when I first read it, it said:
CNN.
(I’ve already posted this as a comment on another diary, but it seems appropriate here as well..)
until 2008. That has been obvious for awhile. The only question is how, or even whether, to hold them responsible. If they cannot distinguish themselves from Republicans in deed, then I say punish them at the voting booth. They may finally take notice of the super-majority wanting out of Iraq. They may realize that their 14% approval rating was not a good thing that meant, “Give Bush all the money for all the wars he wants.” The Supreme Court, you say? Dems have done a bang-up job defending the Supreme Court.
as hahaha usual.
I f they think they have this pinned on the repugs they are nuts. They are being too cute by half, especially if Maher and Blitzer get it.
both sides of their mouths, as our troops and Iraqis die by the day! One really, really, gets sick of the BS.
Ms. Pelosi is paradoxical! While she speaks of all the efforts to bring our troops home and how everything is met with either a veto or Republican resistance — she removed the one thing that may have made a difference in the outcome of those attempts and reiterated it — “I have said Impeachment is off the table.”
Pelosi is either the worst Speaker in 150 years by her rank incompetency, or she is the worst speaker since the Constitution was signed by her complicity with Bush’s war.
Her conduct so far has been a complete and catastrophic failure.
This is a shitdistubing comment, but WTF.
Shouldn’t this message somehow get posted at teh Big Orange?
I took a quick look, and A is correct, nobody there has discussed this today from what I could see.
Now I have no idea how to best accomplish this without pissing off people over there, so I’m just posting for discussion purposes at this point.
Any takers on ideas / thoughts?
I’m not as proficient at reading the “words behind the words” from US politicians as I am with our UK smarmers. She just said re: impeachment, that it was off the table because “This is the President’s war. This is Vice President Cheney’s war and it’s Congress’s war.” Knowing what we know, should she not be offering them jumbo mega helpings of it – supersized? Until they
condoms. It’d be a shame if she caught a communicable disease during those GOP gang bangs she’s been frequenting. I think her knee pads are wearing out. Same goes for Harry Reid.
The actual video is even more embarrassing than the transcript.
Bambi in the highbeams has nothing on Nancy. Defensive, argumentative, and worst of all, fearful.
Can somebody please tell me why nobody in DC has the guts to slam the brakes on this runaway train?
I made an effort though to secure the time to catch this interview and steam roared out of my ears. By hell she gets snitty when someone even attempts to throw the bullshit flag down on one of her plays! By hell I’d love to give her a solid dose of my active duty army wife snitty right alongside hers! I chose not to blog last night about it but saw this diary. I was too fucking flaming pissed off to have anything useful to say. Nothing much to say today that is useful today but I would like to thank Nancy and Rahm profoundly and deeply for their participation in the political dialogue this weekend. I could always speculate who was pissing on mine and my family’s heads but goodness…….speculation isn’t quite the same as just being lined out fully that they are playing political games with my husband’s life and thereby my life and the lives of his children. I’m going to type this once and then I’m done with it but the Democratic leadership is a bunch of Fuckers. Getting people killed for their own political designs and agenda! There is nothing leaderish, virtuous, or for that matter echoing of anything that was once fine and wonderful about America and her goals for herself and the world in the shit that they are pulling. SHAME ON THEM ALL TO HELL AND BACK!