Pelosi - The Shock and Awe, Behind the Curtain

The drive to besmirch Rep. Pelosi over her trip to Syria seems to have fluttered and failed. Except in the hearts and minds of conservative talkers and bloggers.

But let's look back at what happened during this tempest, of the teapot variety.

So what happened in parts of the media?


WaPo’s Robinson Smacks WaPo Editorial Page Over Pelosi Coverage

It is often funny to hear the talk of the liberal Washington Post. The editorial board of the Post is surprisingly like minded to that of the Wall Street Journal. Meaning very conservative.

But in a strange bizarro world moment, Wallace, at FOX News, nails a conservative, who is looking to jump into the presidential race. Sometimes it is almost like they want to be journalist at FOX News. I am sure they got their staffs back on the medication.


Chris Wallace Exposes Newt Gingrich’s Pelosi Hypocrisy

On "FOX News Sunday" today, Chris Wallace confronted Newt Gingrich with the statements he made in 1997 on a trip to China in which he directly contradicted President Clinton's policy regarding Taiwan. Newt Gingrich — along with the right-wing echo chamber and short-memoried MSM — spent the week condemning Speaker Pelosi for doing what Speaker Gingrich did just a decade before. Only then, Gingrich carried a message that was in stark contrast to US foreign policy; something that Nancy Pelosi didn't do, despite baseless right-wing accusations to the contrary.

Boy, something like this must be just the kind of thing a good friend of Pelosi would jump on. I bet someone, say Lieberman, is ready to go to it...Maybe no.


Guess Which One Was Defending Pelosi’s Trip?: Hint: It wasn’t Lieberman

Yes. Surprise , surprise. Republican Arlen Spector stood to defend the Congress's right to travel, study, and converse. Lieberman, a onetime Democrat - now and Indie - who claims to side with the Democrats, chooses to attack legislative power time and again.

Yeah, who needs Balance of Power.

And speaking of...ah, hell, let's talk Israel.

TPM: More dirty tricks from the crooked crowd in the White House?
More dirty tricks from the crooked crowd in the White House?

From the start of this sub-controversy over Speaker Pelosi's comments in Damascus I've suspected a tampering hand from the White House.

You know the details. Pelosi said she had conveyed a message of peace from the Israelis to the Syrians. And then Prime Minister Olmert's office issued a statement appearing to contradict what Pelosi said...

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But I've never thought it was that simple since before Pelosi ever made her statement, the Israeli press was reporting that Olmert had entrusted Pelosi with such a message. As Ha'aretz highly respected diplomatic correspondent Aluf Benn wrote the day before Pelosi's arrival in Damascus...

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If you read Benn's article you'll see that Olmert's message was part of an effort to head off a possible confrontation this summer tied to Arab fears of an American strike against Iran. (It's a complicated issue, which can find out more about by reading Benn's article.)

Now, who else says this? Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) is the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a Holocaust survivor and very close to AIPAC. He was with Pelosi in the key meetings in Jerusalem and Damascus and he says "The speaker conveyed precisely what the prime minister and the acting president asked."

So what happened? Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency is another person who follows these issues closely and knows a lot about them -- that is to say, he doesn't approach these issues through the prism of reading Drudge or what the Vice President said on the Rush Limbaugh show. In any case, Kampeas takes a look at the story. It's a lengthy piece with a lot of important detail. But let me excerpt this section which touches on the issue of, again, what happened?

If that was the case, why did Olmert need to make a clarification, as Israelis were not speaking on the record. Lantos suggested there was pressure from the White House.

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Last year, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talked Olmert into a 48-hour cease-fire during the war with Hezbollah to allow humanitarian relief, but within hours Israeli planes were bombing again, to Rice's surprise and anger. Olmert had received a call, apparently from Cheney's office, telling him to ignore Rice.

So we've had a lot of fun over the last few days with the RNC political shop and Drudge leading a lot of dopes around by the nose. But let's hear a bit more about this. The message the Israelis sent to Damascus was intended to convince the Syrians that the Israelis were not planning to attack the Syrians in concert with an American attack on Iran. There was concern in Israel that this might lead to a preemptive Syrian attack. A message like that from Israel to Syria might be very unwelcome to some people in the White House. Did the White House pressure Olmert? If there was no message, why was the existence of the message being discussed by Israeli officials before Pelosi went to Damascus? Will the White House deny pressuring Olmert? And did any of this occur to the folks who write the Post's editorials?

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Finally, Josh Marshall, of TPM, has done a video on the subject. Good stuff. If they are going to make this regular, it will be great. Marshall, and the TPM lot, are a great source and a perfect example of what "NEW MEDIA" can be. You should be reading the Talking Points Memo site.

One more post, from The Horse's Mouth:

On Hardball, former Clinton ambassador, Richard Holbrooke, went after political and journalistic opportunist trying to take down Pelosi.

Holbrooke:

They're not pursuing a shadow foreign policy. They're making trips to the region. The Republican group had gone out before her. She had Republicans on her group. Congressmen are supposed to travel to understand better how to spend the taxpayers' money, which is their responsibility.

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I think this whole thing has been blown out of proportion by a deliberate ambush plan by the opposition, in this case the Republicans, and frankly, exploited by journalists who are just looking for a fake controversy. There is no issue here. Congressman Wolf, a major Republican, was in the region a few days earlier. Republicans were on her trip. There's no issue. None.

From the Horse's Mouth:

One point about this. Maybe I've missed it, but I haven't seen any Democratic elected officials or direct Pelosi allies denouncing this story in such stark terms as Holbrooke did -- that is, by striking directly at the fraudulent nature of this whole tale, by asserting that this story is a complete GOP ruse that's only being kept alive because of journalism that's incompetent at best and outright dishonest at worst. And frankly, I'm wondering why I haven't seen more Democrats doing this.