Pelosi Hails Maliki Statement, Rips Bush's Iraq-Golf Comment (VIDEO)
News that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki supports Barack Obama's troop withdrawal plan was hailed by Congress' top Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, as evidence of deep flaws and inconsistencies in President Bush and John McCain's policies for Iraq.
"[Bush], McCain, and others have always talked about respecting the will of this sovereign government in Iraq," said the Speaker. "They have said that when it is secure on the ground we can leave, and they claim it is [secure]. So I think that with all the indications in terms of the will of the government and the security that they are claiming on the ground, it would follow that the time has come for us to go. It is long overdue."
In a wide-ranging interview with the Huffington Post, Pelosi threw sharp jabs at both the outgoing president and the presumptive Republican nominee. Asked whether Maliki's remarks - in which he explicitly favored Obama's approach to US-Iraq relations - had removed the philosophical basis for McCain's war policy, she responded: "I have never seen any basis for a policy to go into Iraq."
"It doesn't make any sense," she continued. "'Why aren't you happy that we have a secure situation on the ground,' they say. And yet we can't go home."
Pelosi also offered harsh words for the president's personal conduct. Asked for her reaction to Bush's declaration that he had given up golf out of respect for U.S. soldiers, the Speaker proclaimed herself at a loss for words.
Watch Pelosi on Iraq:
"What can I say that hasn't been said? The very idea that the president would say that he has given up golf as associating himself with the efforts of our troops in Iraq, speaks so eloquently as to how in denial he is about their sacrifice," she said. "We have been in Iraq more than two years longer than when we were in WWII, So when the president says he is giving up golf, it is as frivolous a statement as his other statements about this war: we are going to be greeted with rose petals, it was rocket propelled grenades; the Iraqis are going to pay for this war or do so soon, and we are still paying the tab to the tune of trillions of dollars."
The Speaker's remarks came shortly after she addressed the Netroots Nation convention in Austin, Texas. While on stage she was asked to respond to Maliki's interview with the German newspaper Der Spiegel. Pelosi, then and in her interview with the Huffington Post, said the remarks provided an important opportunity to initiate high-level meetings with Iraq and American officials.
"It behooves the president to say we will have representatives from our government and the Maliki government to sit down and talk about a responsible, honorable and safe deployment of troops out of Iraq," she said.
July 19, 2008 05:00 PM