Pelosi to Visit Syria

[ryr8828]

Appeasement and terrorist emboldenment, A Democrat tradition.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8O6MTT80&show_article=1&catnum=0

Pelosi Going to Syria Despite Objections
Mar 30 04:10 PM US/Eastern
By ANNE FLAHERTY
Associated Press Writer http://img.breitbart.com/images/2007/3/30/D8O6MTT80/D8O6MTT80_preview.jpg
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http://www.breitbart.com/images/common/dot.gif
http://www.breitbart.com/images/common/dot.gif WASHINGTON (AP) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will visit Syria, a country President Bush (http://search.breitbart.com/q?s=%22President+Bush%22&sid=breitbart.com) has shunned as a sponsor of terrorism, despite being asked by the administration not to go. "In our view, it is not the right time to have these sort of high- profile visitors to Syria," State Department (http://search.breitbart.com/q?s=%22State+Department%22&sid=breitbart.com) spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters Friday.
Pelosi arrived in Israel on Friday in what is her second fact-finding trip to the Middle East (http://search.breitbart.com/q?s=%22Middle+East%22&sid=breitbart.com) since taking over leadership in the House in January.
Her repeat trip, an indication she plans to play a role in foreign policy, is also a direct affront to the administration, which says such diplomatic overtures by lawmakers can do more harm than good.
Pelosi will not be the first member of Congress in recent months to travel to Syria, but as House speaker (http://search.breitbart.com/q?s=%22House+speaker%22&sid=breitbart.com) she is the most senior.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the speaker "should take a step back and think about the message that it sends."
"This is a county that is a state sponsor of terror, one that is trying to disrupt the Senora government in Lebanon and one that is allowing foreign fighters to flow into Iraq from its borders," Perino said.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad "probably really wants people to come, and have a photo opportunity, and have tea with him, and have discussions about where they're coming from. But we just think it's a really bad idea," Perino said.
Pelosi's office did not immediately return a call seeking comment on why she was not heeding administration warnings.
U.S. officials held their first direct, high-level contact with Syrian representatives in years when they met in Baghdad this month with officials from several Middle East countries to discuss Iraq.
McCormack said the State Department tried to discourage Pelosi and the others from visiting Syria but agreed to give their staff a pre-trip briefing. The U.S. Embassy in Damascus also is expected to assist the delegation.
Others traveling with Pelosi were Democratic Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Henry Waxman and Tom Lantos of California, Louise Slaughter (http://search.breitbart.com/q?s=%22Louise+Slaughter%22&sid=breitbart.com) of New York and Nick Rahall of West Virginia, and Ohio Republican David Hobson. Ellison is the first Muslim member of Congress.
The House has adjourned for a two-week spring break.
The group planned to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and to travel to the West Bank to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Ellison's spokesman, Rick Jauert.
The speaker is expected on Sunday to address the Israeli Knesset, her first address to a foreign government. She will become the highest- ranking American woman to speak before the Israeli parliament, according to her office.
She is expected to discuss "America's commitment to Israel and the challenges facing the two nations in the Middle East," according to a statement.
In late January, Pelosi and a close political ally, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., led a delegation of House members to Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel and other countries.
The January trip to Baghdad came just days after the president asked Congress in his State of the Union address (http://search.breitbart.com/q?s=%22Union+address%22&sid=breitbart.com) to give his revised war strategy a chance to work. Bush is sending 21,500 additional combat troops, plus thousands of other support troops, to Iraq in a bid to tamp down sectarian attacks and provide enough security to hasten reconstruction efforts.
Pelosi last week forced legislation through the House that would order all combat troops out of Iraq by September 2008, a measure that resembles legislation approved by the Democratic-run Senate.
___
Associated Press writers Frederic J. Frommer, Jennifer Loven and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

[ryr8828]

House Silent on British Hostage Crisis http://www.breitbart.com/images/common/dot.gif
Mar 30 04:00 PM US/Eastern
By ANNE FLAHERTY
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Members of the House left Washington on Friday for their two-week spring break without weighing in on the international crisis (http://search.breitbart.com/q?s=%22international+crisis%22&sid=breitbart.com) tormenting the nation's closest ally: the capture of 15 British sailors and marines by Iran. The omission by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is being noted by some Republicans, who say they should have gotten the chance to join the Senate in denouncing Tehran (http://search.breitbart.com/q?s=tehran&sid=breitbart.com)'s bold actions.
"I am very disappointed that the speaker chose not to act," said Rep. Charles Dent, R-Pa.
"I believe it's important for us as Americans to show our solidarity with the Britons," he added in a phone interview Friday. "The British are our closest allies, and I think we have to stand next to them in a moment like this."
The Senate on Thursday, before adjourning for its one-week break, passed a resolution condemning the act "in the strongest possible terms" and calling for the sailors "immediate, safe and unconditional release."
Pelosi's spokesman Brendan Daly said the speaker was reluctant to weigh in on the incident without knowing that such a message would do more good than harm. Daly said the British government had not asked Congress to try to pressure Tehran.
"The leadership discussed it and agreed that inserting Congress into an international crisis while ongoing would not be helpful," Daly said.
Pelosi is traveling in the Middle East (http://search.breitbart.com/q?s=%22Middle+East%22&sid=breitbart.com), where she plans to visit Syria, Israel and the West Bank (http://search.breitbart.com/q?s=%22West+Bank%22&sid=breitbart.com).
The sailors were seized on March 23 off the Iraqi coast while searching merchant ships (http://search.breitbart.com/q?s=%22merchant+ships%22&sid=breitbart.com) for evidence of smuggling. Britain insists the seven Royal marines and eight sailors were taken in Iraqi waters and has said no admission of error would be made.
Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., says Congress should not only call for the release of the British personnel but also should press the United Nations to explore harsher sanctions against Tehran.
Cantor, the GOP's chief deputy whip, pressed Pelosi this week to pass the measure.
"The illegal seizure of the British forces (http://search.breitbart.com/q?s=%22British+forces%22&sid=breitbart.com) is a signal that Iran views us as powerless to prevent it from realizing its aggressive ambitions," Cantor wrote in a letter to Pelosi.



http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8O6MPD80&show_article=1&catnum=0

[LSU]

Call me crazy, but if Bush is 'shunning' it, it might just work.

[IBC]

Bush, nice job on the terroists. I think the only foreign policy decisions he can trumpet while in office are those where he actually went to the table with people (N. Korea). Ignorance and arrogance are bad foreign policy.

[Vegas]

Bush, nice job on the terroists. I think the only foreign policy decisions he can trumpet while in office are those where he actually went to the table with people (N. Korea). Ignorance and arrogance are bad foreign policy.


If you want to talk about ignorance and arrogance and a North Korea policy, that takes us right to Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. The deal they made there put us in the situation we're in today.

[BoredWithNoSB]

If you want to talk about ignorance and arrogance and a North Korea policy, that takes us right to Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. The deal they made there put us in the situation we're in today.


Odd that we implemented an almost identical deal again 10 years later under the current administration (we give them aid if they promise to stop, and we all know they'll keep their promise this time because we mean it now). Of course, it looks like its going to work just as well too. Making a mistake is one thing, but failure to learn from the mistakes of the past is much less forgivable.

[IBC]

If you want to talk about ignorance and arrogance and a North Korea policy, that takes us right to Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. The deal they made there put us in the situation we're in today.
How was our place in the world? Our coalition if you will? Were there more or less terroists then?

[Vegas]

Diplomacy: Not content with coddling Syria's terrorist regime, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made a fool of herself pretending to be a messenger for Israel's prime minister. But the Israelis were quick to expose the charade.

It seems that trying to take down President Bush isn't enough for the Speaker of the House. On Wednesday, she tried to make Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert look so weak that he needed a U.S. congresswoman to carry messages to Israel's sworn enemies for him.

After President Bashar al-Assad told her that Syria wants negotiations with Israel on the Golan Heights, Pelosi informed reporters in Damascus that the "meeting with the president enabled us to communicate a message from Prime Minister Olmert that Israel was ready to engage in peace talks as well."
Before you could say "Hezbollah," Olmert took issue with the speaker's feeble attempt to mislead Americans into thinking she had Israel's interests in mind in her visit.

A "clarification" issued by the prime minister's office emphasized that Syria "continues to be part of the axis of evil and a force that encourages terror in the entire Middle East." The use of President Bush's famous term for countries like Syria that sponsor terror underlined the strength of Olmert's rebuff to the senior Democrat.

Contrary to Pelosi's assertions, Olmert's statement made it clear that "what was communicated to the U.S. House speaker does not contain any change in the policies of Israel, as was communicated to other foreign leaders."

So Pelosi not only gave Assad a false image of U.S. foreign policy, but of Israeli foreign policy as well.

Olmert reaffirmed that Syria has a long, long way to go before it will be welcomed at the negotiating table. "In order to conduct serious and genuine peace negotiations," said the prime minister's statement, "Syria must cease its support of terror, cease its sponsoring of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations, refrain from providing weapons to Hezbollah and bringing about the destabilizing of Lebanon, cease its support of terror in Iraq, and relinquish the strategic ties it is building with the extremist regime in Iran."

Anyone who thinks Nancy Pelosi showing up wearing a scarf around her head visiting a mosque will cause all that to happen won't even make janitor in the foreign service.

Speaking of that scarf, one waggish Canadian commentator remarked that "given the maple leaf-studded head scarf she donned before entering a Syrian mosque yesterday, American House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could have been an ambassador for Canada."

She certainly represented the dovish foreign policy of the land of the maple leaf a lot more than that of a post-9/11 America leading a global war on terror.

As Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney remarked Wednesday at a campaign stop in Iowa, "Her going to a state which is without question a sponsor of terror, and having her picture taken with Assad and being seen in a head scarf and so forth is sending the wrong signal to the people of Syria and to the people of the Middle East."

The former Massachusetts governor called it "a very bad idea to be carrying out a separate and independent foreign policy from the president of the United States."

But the kind of Democrats now ruling the roost in Congress think nothing of placing politics above the national interest. The speaker went to Syria to show up President Bush by making it look like all he's had to do for years now is stop being a hardliner, arrange for some face time with hostile Islamic governments and — voila! — there will be progress in the Middle East peace process.

Meanwhile, Pelosi refused to support our steadfast ally Britain by allowing the House vote on a resolution condemning Iran for taking British sailors hostage. Instead, she goes halfway around the world to coddle our enemy.

Luckily for America Nancy Pelosi's incompetence means there's been only one casualty so far from her independent foreign policy: the speaker's ever-plummeting reputation.

[BoredWithNoSB]

A "clarification" issued by the prime minister's office emphasized that Syria "continues to be part of the axis of evil and a force that encourages terror in the entire Middle East." The use of President Bush's famous term for countries like Syria that sponsor terror underlined the strength of Olmert's rebuff to the senior Democrat.

Meanwhile, Pelosi refused to support our steadfast ally Britain by allowing the House vote on a resolution condemning Iran for taking British sailors hostage. Instead, she goes halfway around the world to coddle our enemy.

See its this whole "Axis of evil", policy of isolation, and "coddling the enemy" talk that leaves me with no hope for long-term peace. Its only a pissing match at this point. No problem ever got solved constructively by not talking about it.

[Vegas]

See its this whole "Axis of evil", policy of isolation, and "coddling the enemy" talk that leaves me with no hope for long-term peace. Its only a pissing match at this point. No problem ever got solved constructively by not talking about it.

So when the talk was friendlier, were the prospects for mideast peace better?

[BoredWithNoSB]

So when the talk was friendlier, were the prospects for mideast peace better?

I'd say yes. We had both sides talking to each other and airing their views. We had both sides sitting ata table trying to figure out how they could work things out to make both happy and not wishing each other death.

Maybe its the whole Covey "Seek first to understand, then to be understood." brainwashing I've had.

Similar to US domestic politics, or even the politics we have her ein my current state, when the two sides aren't talking you only get win:lose solutions or worse yet lose:lose. Back when government on most levels was functional you could create comprimises or win:win situations.