The Right State

The noise from the right has been loud, long, and sustained. Their combined voices have told Nancy Pelosi to say ‘no’ to Alcee Hastings for chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee. And it looks like we have been heard.

House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi has told Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings that he will not be the next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, the two Democrats announced Tuesday.

“I have been informed by the speaker-elect that I will not serve as the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the 110th Congress. I am obviously disappointed with this decision. As we learn in Ecclesiastes, however, for everything there is a season,” he said in a press statement.

“Congressman Alcee Hastings and I have had extensive consultations, and today I advised him that I would select someone else as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Alcee Hastings has always placed national security as his highest priority. He has served our country well, and I have full confidence that he will continue to do so,” Pelosi said in a separate release.

For some odd reason, Pelosi thought that we would just accept a man who has previously accepted bribes to be chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Her ‘trust me’ is not good enough. Anyone who would accept bribes may also sell secrets. And that is one thing we can not allow to happen.

I have no delusions that Pelosi has decided to do what is right. She has already faced defeat when her candidate for the House Majority Leader, the corrupt John Murtha, was rejected overwhelmingly by the Democrats. The writing is on the wall and it says more defeat will follow if she selects an impeached judge for the chairmanship of the super-important House Intelligence Committee. Only this time the defeat will not come from the Democratic Party, but from the American people who see that Pelosi can not be trusted with selecting good leaders with impeccable integrity.

Further signs that Pelosi does not know what she is doing can be demonstrated by her lack of understanding of the situation in Iraq.

House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told reporters on Wednesday that she feels it is “sad” that President Bush continues to blame Iraqi insurgent violence on al Qaeda.

“My thoughts on the president’s representations are well-known,” Pelosi said. “The 9/11 Commission dismissed that notion a long time ago and I feel sad that the president is resorting to it again.”

Pelosi’s idiotic statements come on the heels of a press conference by General Caldwell in which he outlines what al Qaeda has been doing in Iraq.

Pelosi’s statement also followed a press briefing in Baghdad earlier today, where a US military spokesman was unable to state clearly what role al Qaeda plays in Iraq violence.

Displaying a series of slides and charts, the spokesman for the multinational forces in Iraq claimed that “since October of 2004, we have now killed or captured over 7,000 al Qaeda in Iraq terrorists.”

According to Major General William Caldwell, because Iraq still has a “government moving forward” with “institutions in place,” and because al Qaeda in Iraq seeks “anarchy” instead of power, the current situation should not be considered a “civil war.”

Let’s put all of this into perspective. The military has captured over 7,000 al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq, including some of Osama bin Laden’s lieutenants. And our troops have captured documents which show that communications between bin Laden and his followers in Iraq have tried to foment sectarian violence. These two points are well-known and documented. So for Nancy Pelosi to say that al-Qaeda is not in Iraq is plain wrong. She is either being deceptive and partisan in her speech or she is totally ignorant of the situation in Iraq. Neither of these two qualities make a good leader.

Considering her bad choices for leadership posts and her lack of knowledge about Iraq, Pelosi is obviously well over her head as the new Speaker of the House.

Tags: Democrats, Iraq, War //