I don't know about the WaPo, but in the WallStreet Journal, Olmert was quoted as telling Pelosi: "tell them that we'll deal with them if they stop their terrorism" and I just shock my head because the quote sounded uninspiring and simply a modern day talking point.

Such a quote makes me think that Olmert is a stupid, racist guy and I the WSJ would better serve Olmert by having him say something that is both profound and insightful towards trying to solve the problem.

I also recall Pelosi saying that several republicans had gone to Syria and why not criticize them?

I wish the WaPo could post a picture of Olmert, Pelosi, those republicans and Syrian Leaders hugging one another and singing "We Shall Overcome!"

I believe it was David Obey just two weeks ago saying that the problem is not that the congress doesn't listen to the post, it's that they listen to the Post too much. And Chris Matthews described them on Hardball last week as a "neo-con" publication.

The Post has suffered under Hiatt, but he's just a puppet for Donald Graham. When Hiatt talks, you can see Graham's lips move.

Haaretz readers clearly side with Pelosi over Olmert as to believability. M.J. is right on the mark. Israel is worried about two different issues. Israeli intelligence is reporting a military build up in Iran, Syria and by Hezbollah in preparation for an American, not as Josh reports an Israeli, attack this spring. Israel is responding in kind and there is a desire to avoid a war that no one wants simply because there are misjudgments.

Then there is the larger issue of negotiation about broader Israeli and Syrian issues the Golan and the Israeli soldiers still being held by Hezbollah.

For Olmert's office to say there has been no change of Israeli policy is hardly a repudiation of Pelosi's statement. Furthermore, there is a need for a messenger between the various parties in the Middle East. Rice is so hamstrung by the ineptitude and stupid policies of the Bush Administration who knows how credible she is to anyone. Pelosi can speak with the strength of a recent election behind her.

Only Israel and Syria can make peace with each other but the U.S. can make sure that ideas and intentions are kept clear. If Bush wants to abdicate this role Pelosi and other memebers of Congress ought not to wait until January 2009 to act.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

On April 5, 2007 - 10:27am mcs said:

I don't know about the WaPo, but in the WallStreet Journal, Olmert was quoted as telling Pelosi: "tell them that we'll deal with them if they stop their terrorism"

How many other see how much this sounds like Bush?

My guess is that "clarifications" from every side over the next few (weekend) days will support Pelosi's side of the story. But Teh 'Winger Wurlitzer has its talking points.

As for the Washington Post, Hiatt and Donnie Graham are, of course, blind Bush supporters (I've heard rumors, take that for as well-sourced as it sounds, that Donnie was pushing to turn the Post rightward while Mama Katie was alive, but she wouldn't let him), don't forget Len Downie, who is ultimately responsible for Bob Woodward being on page 1, while Walter Pincus was on page 17.

Thinkprogress have just confirmed Darryl Issa is also in Syria.

And unlike Pelosi, Issa apparently isn't very polite about Bush.

Will be interesting to see what WaPo has to say about her meeting with Bush's ex-BFF Abdullah.

Still, let's have some pity on WaPo. What we're witnessing here is the Official Commencement of Lame Duck Status for G.W. Bush. Fred Hiatt must be sick with grief.

Yeah, we wouldn't want any "mixed messages!" Nothing mixed about this quote:

"We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace," Ms. Pelosi grandly declared.

Never mind that that statement is ludicrous:

That uppity Nancy Pelosi is not only ludicrous, she blasphemed our very own war-mongering regime! She ought to be horse-whipped! Of all the nerve!!!!!

I mean, who gave her permission to try to make peace? Nobody!

Jan Knaus

I would add NBC and its cable subsidiaries--Olbermann being the obvious execption--to the "not as obvious as Fox" list.

On April 5, 2007 - 1:37pm mcs said: I think it's also Pelosi:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "Iran is not just an Israeli problem, it's not just a problem for the region, Iran is a problem for the world."

Agreed, Pelosi blew it with this bullshit. Pandering at its worst, and its this crapola that helped get us into Iraq, only then it was Saddam that caused them to trip over themselves in their rush to the House floor to condemn him and score cheap political points.

I guarantee, these words by Pelosi will come back to haunt her.

On what grounds do you base your claim that
AIPAC "doesn't represent either the Israeli
or American public?" I presume you mean
they are too "pro-Israel", for Israel's
own good, of course.
As I recall, Martin Indyk was with along with
Dennis Ross were with AIPAC
and no one represented Palestinian interests
better than Indyk did as Ambassador to Israel.
Both coddled terrorist chieftain Arafat (wasn't
it Ross's idea that Arafat should visit the
Anne Frank house in Holland in order to show
his "touchy, feely, senstive side"?),
pressured Israel to make irresponsible concessions,
and both
are at least indirectly responsible for the
murder and mayhem Arafat unleashed on Israel.
If AIPAC people like this are "too pro-Israel",
what would an anti-Israel person be like?

J. McCutchen

MY congresswoman is, as one CT representative put it, "the best thing that has happened to the democratic party in a long time"

If her trip to Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia and her anti-war leadership in the House are any indication, she is the best thing that has happened to US foreign policy in the past 8 years.

The US is a laughinstock in the middle east. Contrast Condi's failures with the reception Speaker Pelosi has received and it is easy to see why the Post is so anxious

Juan Cole has some further insight in his column today

Israel vs. Bush & the Neoconservatives on Syria? Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's trip to Damascus makes perfect sense as domestic US politics. The Democratic Party is developing its own foreign policy, different from that of Bush, which involves negotiating with Middle Eastern actors rather than just attempting to isolate them, call them evil, and if possible overthrow them. In the post-Iraq era (that one is all over with but the shouting, folks), such a policy of (tough) negotiating makes sense for the US, even if Bush refuses to see it. There is a lot he cannot see.
But Pelosi's trip doesn't make so much sense on the surface if one stops to think how close the top Democratic leadership is to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which in turn is close to government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. AIPAC had earlier pushed for isolating Syria.
But here we have Tom Lantos, among the staunchest partisans of Israel in Congress, expressing satisfaction with Pelosi going off to Damascus. And, Pelosi is carrying a message to Bashar al-Asad from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Yet the trip is being denounced by Bush and the Neoconservatives around him, including Jewish intellectuals with deep ties to the Israel lobby.
So what is going on here, really?
One possibility is that AIPAC and Olmert feel that they have been burned by the Neoconservatives-- by Elliot Abrams of the Bush National Security Council, by Richard Perle and Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute (and formerly of the Pentagon), by John Hannah and Irv Lewis Libby on Dick Cheney's national security staff, etc....Of course, there is the danger that rather than seeking a comprehensive Middle East peace, the opening to Syria and Saudi Arabia will simply be used for military action against Iran or that no practical steps will be taken to resolve the Palestine issue (as they were not when Israel made peace with Egypt and later with Jordan).
But you have to wonder whether, after Richard Perle's wild ride as a Dr. Strangelove-like influence-peddler in Washington, whether the time of Brit Tzedek v'Shalom may be coming.

after seeing a graph on the correlation between housing prices and WWII, who knows? the not only permanent but manic war spending could permanently keep the housing prices lifted now, for better or worse, and save us from the bubble???

The Graph

Of course, I'm only assuming that the war spending did it but my teachers have always associated war to a better economy and perhaps that's because of the lift in asset prices.

I know I'll never forget the lift of technology wages in the late 90's....

I think this quote from Pelosi shows the hold that the Israeli lobby has on our Democratic Party. All hostage speeches coming from our power brokers in the party sounding as if they are reading off the same AIPAC ME policy press release. If they diverge, and are off AIPAC message like Wes Clark tried to do, well look what happens.

However, I don't think Pelosi is a Lantos, Hoyer, Emanuel, or Schumer, after all she did try and bring in Murtha into her inner circle. It failed, but she tried. She's in a tough position, I respect her eventhough I often don't agree with her with regards to Israel.

On April 5, 2007 - 4:07pm rumpole said:

I know that I'm going to get flamed for this, but...

Nah, no flaming. Good post.

this principle is reflected in the law's "one voice" doctrine...
...
enabling hostile foreign states to pit one branch of our government against the other...

isn't that what checks and balances are about? the problem with bush is that he's unable to communicate why the "one voice" he has is the best of public opinion, congress and his own judgement.

if he had those skills, there would be less fuss and people wouldn't think that he sounds and acts like a dictator who doesn't like them or the world.

way too many people are counting down the days until he's gone.

More than “dangerous” I think. “Bush’s side” of the argument is not “Bush’s side.” As you rightly point out it wasn’t too long ago that something like Ms. Pelosi’s visit to Syria would be an unacceptable violation of the intended construction of our Federal government. But Bush rejects that construction in principle and prior to any individual action. His use of this argument is disingenuous. Bush asserts a construction of the Executive branch that makes arguments based on the Constitution and traditions of U.S. political history and custom moot. His is a “unitary” presidency with no limitation on power in law, tradition or Constitution. That is “Bush’s side.”

Ms. Pelosi has had to suffer for six years the behavior from this new notion of an all powerful executive. She has often commented on how the behavior of the Administration and the Republican controlled Congress has abandoned the tradition of co-equal branches of government and their respective powers and responsibilities. I wonder if at some point she has concluded that she must be the highest ranking elected official who still adheres to those principles, the very ones that once have made her visit inappropriate. If you will a kind of virtual impeachment has occurred. She may be about to throw down the gauntlet in the argument about the nature of our democracy.

What makes this more than dangerous in my mind is that there is no one on the current political landscape with the stature to re-establish these principles. Habeas Corpus is a concept so time honored and so integral to our notion of governance that the writers of the Constitution did not think it was even necessary to argue its stature. Its return to that stature will now require some new act of Congress. I worry that the “Feinstein/Dorgan Habeas Corpus Act” will be a wane and infirm replacement for the Great Writ. Similarly while we would all like to return other traditional notions like privacy we will only retrieve them with new laws and protocols. Who is there who will write those rules with the insight and sophistication of our Enlightenment era founding fathers.

I think the “danger” here is only the symptom of a larger challenge that waits for us in the next few years.

The fight for majority leader.

Hoyer is AIPAC's and DLC free trader whip boy... his sister is AIPAC Chair of the Board.

Murtha was interested in getting troops redeployed out of Iraq, Hoyer's agenda was less clear. In an unusual move Pelosi backed Murtha over Hoyer for majority leader.

AIPAC's Achievements

No, I mean last time I checked Isreal was not part of the United States, so they have no business having a PAC influencing our Congress.

My sympathies concerning the Isreali/Palistinean conflict are irrelevant, as tragic as it is. Both parties must yield for there to be peace, and that's a practical matter I believe anyone can agree to. But that is irrelevent to the matter at hand: keeping, as Mr. Stewart of the Daily Show so eloquently put it, "President Bombsalot" under control while we figure out who lost the keys to the cabinet that holds his leash.

The fact is AIPAC does NOT represent the people of the US, nor do they represent the people of Isreal. Particularly the people of Isreal, not even close. They represent very narrow interests and have an undue influence on our government.

J. McCutchen

You are right on!

The Speaker of the House and the Chairman of the IR Committee cannot make US foreign policy and Bush can in second undo anything constuctive that they may have accomplished.

You are right indeed that the House delegation should not be put to this pass, but that's where we are

It puts pressure on Bush to do what the ISG recommended and that's about as good as it is going to get until we are rid of this man

An old article from Harretz comes to mind
that lamented Israel’s lack of a foreign policy.

This same criticism fits the US today.
"There is no foreign policy only a military policy."

When there is only a military policy, the correct
criticism for Pelosi would be for her efforts to prevent conflict.

The ultimate sedition in the eyes of Bush and the Neocons is peacemaking!

-----------------------------------------------
Today, are we searching for I deals or Ideals?
-Thinking

Many noted that Pelosi is not an AIPAC enemy, and people like Lantos are kind of more AIPAC that AIPAC (which in turn is more pro-Israel than Israel). That said, this group may have lucid moments.

The aftermath of American withdrawal from Iraq will not be pretty, and one can either close his/her eyes and claim that either it will never happen or nothing untoward will happen in such an eventuality, or one can try to face and minimize the consequences.

The policy of resolute isolation of "Syrian regime" is basically forcing it into aliance with Iran, which in turn is not such a marvelous thing. Investigating the alternatives is just the modicum of forsight and sanity that we badly need.

And ponder this: is Bashir Asad a "bad thug" because he is behind a ruthless string of assasinations in Lebanon, or because he botched a simple torture job that he promised us to do? Thing how much grief would USA avoid if Syrians quietly killed Arar, or, barring that, kept indefinitely in secret. I love moral clarity.

Now we are constructively engaging thugs ruling Ethiopia, we give them weapons and training and they run secret prisons for us. In time, Ethiopia will be ripe for democracy! Why Pelosi did not go to Ethiopia instead, thus visiting good thugs rather than evil thugs!

Your statement about the Armenian lobby is probably correct today, but for many years the Greek lobby worked very hard to
block Turkish interests (and don't forget Turkey has the largest NATO army on the Eurasian continent) because of
Cyprus and other issues.

Regarding my statement about AIPAC only being "supposedly" pro-Israel, what I mean is that you have to understand that the Israeli government, since the Oslo agreements of 1993 is largely out of synch with public opinion. The majority of Israelis support what might be called "Right-wing" opinions.
Rabin was elected in 1992 swearing he would never give up the Golan Heights or ever bring Arafat to Israel and give him a state. He then offered the Golan to Syrian and brought Arafat to Israel which then unleashed the greatest wave of murder and mayhem in Israel's history. Netanyahu was elected in 1996 explicity promising NOT to withdraw Israeli troops from Hevron because of the sensitive situation there (Hevron Arabs also did not want Israel troops withdrawan because Arafat's FATAH is hated there). He did it anyway. Ehud Barak was elected in 1999 explicitly promising never to allow Palestinian refugees to return to Israel, and also promising to keep the large majority of Jews in Judea/Samaria/Gaza under Israeli rule and most important, he swore he would NEVER divide Jerusalem. He broke everyone one of these promises in the offers he made to Arafat during the Camp David and Taba discussion. During the 2003 election campaign, Labor's candidate for Prime Minister Mitzna made the major issue in the campaign removing SOME of the Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip (Gush Katif). Sharon SWORE he wouldn't do it (I worked as a volunteer in his campaign based on this promise) and won OVERWHELMINGLY. So naturally, he turns around and destroys more communities than Mitzna ever promised
and his supposedly "right-wing" Likud party including the supposedly "hard-line right wing" Bibi Netanyahu supported it. BTW it is a myth that there was ever majority support for destroying Gush Katif. Everyone who claims that bases that on newspaper public opinion polls. These polls as you know are notoriously unreliable, but even so, when the destruction was done the polls shows about 45% for, 35% against, the rest were "don't know".
Now, the point I am getting at is that AIPAC doesn't represent
Israeli public opinion, which as I have shown, is "right-wing", it represents Israeli GOVERNMENT opinion, which is far to the Left of public opinion. Thus, during the heyday of the Oslo years, when Rabin and Peres were in power, the policy of the Israeli government was to arm Arafat's terrorist gangs and they wanted to get the US to pay for it. AIPAC was then mobilized to lobby American Congressmen and Senators who were pro-Israel and get them to buy weapons to give to terrorists in order to murder Israelis.
In spite of the claims we keep hearing the Israel is a "thriving democracy", in reality the right-wing majority
in Israel is basically disenfranchised which explains the sharp drop in voter turn out in the last election (I voted for a party that did not pass the electoral threshhold as a protest vote) and the generally absense of any real political activity.

I hope this answers your question.

So "ARE YOU TAKING SIDES?" didn't work now "Billy's beatin' Bobby's face so it's ok to kick Joey's ass."? Why is it whenever the issue of Isreal/Palestine comes up, the discussion devolves into this type of nonsense?

It's obvious you are so close to the issue you are having a hard time being objective about it. There are NO easy answers to the Isreali/Palestinian conflict. Will you accept that premise? Because that is a separate issue that I will not be dragged into in this setting. Additionally, I am in no way shape or form, knowledgable to comment on the million and one details that must be "groked" in order to get your brain around the situation.

Sending a PAC to the US to influence our policy is an insult to the fellowship our two peoples have had for decades, maybe even centuries. A relationship forever soiled when espionage entered the picture.

The bullshit politics in Isreal are no different than the bullshit politics here, with ONE striking similarity: if it WAS a true democracy, it would not be opposed to right of return. Just like GOP is oh-so concerned about immigration in the US - when all they are worried about is their white, Christian, conservative votes being diluted. I might be out on a limb with the former, but I know for a fact that I'm spot-on with the latter.

We, and I include you, are trying to change what is going on in this country and maybe that will rub off on Isreal when they see the madness that is consuming our country.

So, as an American citizen, if you are one, pay attention:

They all need to get the hell out of OUR business, I don't care who they are or what interests they represent.

If AIPAC doesn't represent the Isreali public, but represents the Isreali Government, then they (the Isreali public) need to do what WE did last November. The last poll I saw they represented but a small percentage of the Isreali public. But that is besides the point, the fact is that it is rediculous for them to influence US policy while representing a minority of Isrealis, at the same time representing...who in the US?

A post by Greenwald that's worth reading on what happened when Newt started running his mouth.

The risks of divergent messages, cont'd. 

I find it fascinating that your whole argument boils down to Olmert being a liar about Pelosi's criminal attempts to kidnap America's foreign policy. I don't see him lying about Condi Rice's characterization of his entreaties to Syria.

But the first time a speaker of the house, against the demands of the President, goes abroad and attempts to countermand his constitutional policies, then suddenly Bush is setting her up, the Israeli leader is setting her up, the Washington post is setting her up, the Wall Street Journal is setting her up. Our founding fathers are against her as well. So the rest of the world is mis characterizing her actions, but she is doing the works of the divine. Her divine works are appreciated by who? One of the worlds most wicked mass murderers.

It reminds me of the mother that sees her son marching out of step in the marching band and says, "Look, Jimmy is so good, he's the only one that is in step".

You are deluded M.J. She broke the Logan act and commited a felony. She is an embarrassment. She should be dealt with when she deplanes from her Jumbo Jet.

She just said what she thought.

How refreshing! How unusual!

Not to me. She reminded me of Madeline Albright whose face glowed as she said: "we think 500,000 dead Iraqi children are worth the price."

Maybe you are being sarcastic though.

I am not being sarcastic. But you are being hyperbolic at least when you tie the above referenced quote as an equivalent to Pelosi saying that Iran is a problem for the region and the world; not just the US.

Please explain how the two phrases are similar. What you said is ridiculous! You may as well say that it reminds you of when Bush talked about gynecologists not getting to spread their love around. It makes as much sense!

Jan Knaus