“Shining” on Congress

 Apparently, Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want to hear the truth. According to Politico, she has warned General Petraeus that when he briefs Congress this week, she doesn’t want him to  put a shine on recent events in Basra;

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) warned Army Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on Thursday not to “put a shine on recent events” in Iraq when they testify before Congress next week.

“I hope we don’t hear any glorification of what happened in Basra,” said Pelosi, referring to a recent military offensive against Shiite militants in the city led by the Iraqi government and supported by U.S. forces.

Although powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr agreed to a ceasefire after six days of fighting, Pelosi wondered why the U.S. was caught off guard by the offensive and questioned how the ceasefire was achieved, saying the terms were “probably dictated from Iran.”

“We have to know the real ground truths of what is happening there, not put a shine on events because of a resolution that looks less violent when in fact it has been dictated by al-Sadr, who can grant or withhold that call for violence,” Pelosi said.

Now, I don’t know what that means unless she’s hinting that she just doesn’t want to hear the truth. Try as I might, I can’t out-write the staff of the Investors’ Business Daily in responding to Pelosi;

“Glorification?” Heaven forfend we should glorify “what happened in Basra.” Our troops fought bravely, performing superbly the job assigned them by their own government — including you, Madam Speaker. But we shouldn’t “glorify” them.

We’re not talking about a mere policy dispute here. There are lots of legitimate policy disputes, even about war. This is about the open contempt some members of one major party seem to hold for our men and women in uniform. It’s one thing to oppose a war, another to more or less openly root for us to lose it.

Well, we have some real bad news for Ms. Pelosi. Seems a new National Intelligence Estimate is out. And it says what she fears most: The situation in Iraq is much improved. We’re winning.

The New York Times quotes Pelosi in one of her Stalinesque double-speak moments;

“I’m a big proponent of the First Amendment,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. “But I would hope that as we set the stage for General Petraeus’s appearance before the committee, it is by shining a bright light of truth and a mirror on what he has to say and see how that is consistent with our greater national security goals.”

Um, what does giving a briefing to Congress have to do with the First Amendment? The man is telling Pelosi what is happening in Iraq, not making a speech about political motivations.  I’d like to see her use the same standard for her own staff and her fellow Democrats in Congress when “shining a bright light of truth”.

The Wall Street Journal highlights the differences between the Republicans and Democrats in the Presidential campaign;

 “Overall, it’s a remarkable success — overall with significant challenges ahead,” Mr. McCain told The Associated Press recently as he predicted what Mr. Petraeus will say about the troop-increase strategy and what he says he believes himself — even though the year of the buildup was the bloodiest yet for U.S. troops.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama offer a sharp contrast to the Republican nominee-in-waiting.

“It is time to end this war as quickly and responsibly as possible,” Mrs. Clinton said last month. She argued that the current strategy hasn’t accomplished its goals because Iraqis have not reached a political reconciliation.

Mr. Obama also wants a quick end to the war and said Friday, “We still don’t have a good answer to the question posed by Sen. (John) Warner the last time Gen. Petraeus appeared: How has this effort in Iraq made us safer and how do we expect it will make us safer in the long run?”

Mr. Obama said Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain have been “trumpeting improvements from a horrific situation to a simply unsustainable and intolerable situation.”

The actual truth is; the Democrats are already taking big hits because of their ill-considered comments over the last five years and they’re rightly concerned that it will only get worse. Since they’ve hitched their wagon to the likes of the retarded ranks of Code Pink and the IVAW (who, by the way, don’t really want the war to end either), Democrats have painted themselves into a corner they can’t escape – except by lying to the American people, and now Pelosi wants General Petreaus to lie to Democrats.

And the media is out taking preemptive potshots at  President Bush and General Petraeus to blunt the inevitable blow Petreaus will deal Congress this week, like this in the Washington Post today;

 Others see Bush’s reliance on Petraeus as part of a larger pattern. “It is part of Bush’s overall management style — to cede responsibility to a lower level and not look carefully at critical issues himself,” said Kenneth Adelman, a Reagan-era official who has parted company with such longtime friends as Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney over the war.

The old “Bush is an idiot” line. Well, we’ll just see, won’t we?

Veterans for Freedom will be in the North Senate Park at 9:30 Tuesday morning – and so will I.

Category: Antiwar crowd, Politics, Support the troops