Pelosi steps in it. Statements from many sources

[calfoxwc]

This, and more on Dems and Obama moving to the central right on national security,

 

can be read here:

 

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/05/growing-pains-.html

 

Meanwhile, Pelosi, D-Calif., is hoping the CIA notes and congressional inquiries bear her out.

 

Pelosi’s press conference “dramatically raised the stakes in the growing debate over the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism policies even as it brought troubling new questions about the speaker’s credibility,” Dan Balz writes for The Washington Post. “Pelosi’s performance in the Capitol was either a calculated escalation of a long-running feud with the Bush administration or a reckless act by a politician whose word had been called into question. Perhaps it was both.”

 

“The speaker’s charges about the CIA’s alleged deception and her shifting accounts of what she knew and when she knew it are likely to add to calls for some kind of independent body to investigate this supercharged issue, though Obama and many members of Congress would like to avoid a wholesale unearthing of the past at a time when their plates are full with pressing concerns,” he writes.

 

The New York Times’ Carl Hulse: “The issue is emerging as one of the toughest tests of Ms. Pelosi’s tenure, as she finds herself fending off accusations of hypocrisy from Republicans for criticizing the interrogation methods, even though she had known about them, and from liberal critics who say that she should have raised the alarm earlier if she knew what was transpiring.”

 

Pelosi is “escalating a controversy grown to include both political parties, the spy agency and the White House,” the AP’s David Espo writes. “Pelosi's decision to respond to her critics was something of a surprise, since most polls show Obama and his policies are popular, and Republicans have exhibited virtually nonstop political disarray in the six months since last fall's elections.”

 

“Edging ever closer to debating what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is,” Joseph Curl writes in the Washington Times.

 

“Parsing isn't pretty, is it?” Melinda Henneberger writes for Politics Daily.

 

“Nancy Pelosi is a woman of many talents. Yesterday, she performed the delicate art of backtracking while walking sideways,” The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank writes.

 

Any sign this goes away? “With both guns blazing at an extraordinary news conference Thursday, the Democrat from San Francisco made good on that, accusing the CIA of lying when the agency said she was told about torture in 2002,” Carolyn Lochhead writes in the San Francisco Chronicle. “In doing so, Pelosi turned a distraction into a conflagration.”

 

“The news reignited a story that has been dogging Pelosi for weeks, through a surprise trip to Iraq and back, Mother's Day and the passage of the war supplemental,” Time’s Jay Newton-Small reports. “The Obama Administration this week reversed its decision to release hundreds of photos of detainees being intimidated and tortured in an effort to get away from a subject that is increasingly eating into their media coverage.”

 

Tracking the fallout -- CIA spokesman George Little: “It is not the policy of this agency to mislead the United States Congress.”

 

“It's outrageous that a member of Congress should call a terror-fighter a liar,” said Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., the vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, per ABC News. “It seems the playbook is, blame terror-fighters.”

 

“I think that there is a question of veracity of her comments today, and if you look at her body language she certainly didn't look comfortable in what she was saying,” Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said on ABCNews.com’s “Top Line” Thursday.

 

Support among Democrats has been solid, if not spectacular: “After the press conference, eight of the 13 Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee assembled with talking points to back up Pelosi. They said members of Congress, especially those in the minority, have almost no power to change intelligence policies,” The Hill’s Mike Soraghan and Jared Allen report.

 

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., asked House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., whether he agrees with Pelosi that the CIA was lying to Congress: “I have no idea of that -- don’t have a belief of that nature because I have no basis on which to base such a belief. And I certainly hope that’s not the case. I don’t draw that conclusion,” Hoyer said, per Politico’s Glenn Thrush.

 

(Former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla. -- who got briefings similar to Pelosi’s as top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, and who’s generally backed up Pelosi’s version of events -- is the guest on ABCNews.com’s “Top Line” Friday, live at noon ET, with me and guest host Jonathan Karl.)

 

 

 

 

[calfoxwc]

It's true, I despise Pelosi.

 

But I don't hate Obama. I despise his socialist policies, they make

 

me worry about our country.

 

You can ask John - I was all for waiting to see what Obama would do,

 

I thought he'd be a moderate, representing all Americans.

 

 

But, that turned out to be wrong.

 

But Pelosi? She's corrupt. Pure no matter what political manipulation.

 

She has now tried to bluff on a million dollar pot, and she's being called.

 

The CIA, imhso, has no reason to lie. Plenty of other senators were briefed,

 

and they will not say what Pelosi has said.

 

It's a scandal. I don't think Obama deserves it, but Pelosi does - she created it.

 

I believe she should step down.

[calfoxwc]

My thumb hurts worse now, it's your fault.