Gingrich: Pelosi Step Down as Speaker

Posted by johnhouk on May 20, 2009
 John R. Houk
© May 20, 2009

Well I can see the reason that Newt Gingrich is a politician. His recent e-newsletter castigates Speaker Pelosi without actually calling her a liar. I was not so capable of being so diplomatic.

Speaker Pelosi is the classic example of the hypocrisy of the now devotedly Leftist Democratic Party. The Democrats went on a rampage of vilifying President Bush’s policies of keeping America safe even to the point of calling for a criminal investigation of the Bush Administration and those that acted patriotically to protect American citizens from the reoccurrence of another 9/11.

With the aid of the Mainstream Media, the Democrats unleashed some political venom of propaganda upon American voters to influence votes that placed the Democrats back in the driver’s seat in 2006. Then the voters received another chunk full of propaganda that elected a deceptive Leftist President whose primary goal is to transform America away from her roots of Christianity toward the diversity concept of Secular Humanism and the redistribution of wealth. The term “redistribution of wealth” is MSM code talk for Socialism at best and Communism at worst.

One can see Communism at its worst through the eyes of Comrade Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong.

The social transformation led by President Barack Hussein Obama and the elite cadres of the Democratic Party is subtly validating some of the worst elements of the morally depraved in America. The transformation excuse: The morally deprave are people on par with a race or religion; to discriminate against the morally depraved is thus racism and a denial of civil rights that all the diverse Americans should enjoy.

Okay, I know I digressed on Speaker Pelosi.

Newt neatly rails on Pelosi by putting her political agenda of persecuting the Bush Administration for the Democrats call torture. Is it not ironic the Obama Administration has gone to great lengths not to insult Mohammedans by eliminating such terms as the Global War on Terror (GWOT) or Islamic terrorism to find neutral words? Yet the Obama/Pelosi Democrats have no trouble using the word “torture” rather than Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT) against Americans that have devoted themselves to keep other Americans safe. Does anyone see the lunacy on this political vendetta to prevent Conservatives of the Republican Party from ever gaining control of Congress and the White House?

But check it out: Since Speaker Pelosi as the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence committee never protested EIT; does not that make Pelosi an adherent to the practice of protecting Americans?

So you see how Speaker Pelosi has dug a hole for herself by attempting to use plausible deniability to make it look like she was never on board with EIT.

Newt is correct that Pelosi should be removed not because of her political agenda, but because her political agenda has placed America and Americans at risk by diluting National Security.

JRH 5/20/09
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Why Pelosi Should Step Down

By Newt Gingrich
05/20/2009
Human Events

The case against Nancy Pelosi remaining Speaker of the House is as simple as it is devastating:

The person who is No. 2 in line to be commander in chief can’t have contempt for the men and women who protect our nation. America can’t afford it.

To test how much damage Speaker Pelosi has done to the defense of our nation, ask yourself this: If you were a young man or woman just starting out today, would you put on a uniform or become an intelligence officer to defend America, knowing that tomorrow a politician like Nancy Pelosi could decide you were a criminal?

Would you?

This Isn’t About Politics. It’s About National Security

The controversy swirling around Speaker Pelosi isn’t political -- she may think it is, other liberal Democrats may think it is, and the media may want it to appear that way.

But this isn’t about politics. It’s about national security.

At issue is whether Speaker Pelosi was informed, at a briefing by intelligence officers on September 4, 2002 when she was the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, that the CIA had used and was using enhanced interrogation techniques -- specifically waterboarding -- on captured al Qaeda terrorists.

From a Question of Memory to a Question of Criminality

Prior to her now infamous press conference last week, Speaker Pelosi insisted that the CIA had not told her in 2002 that waterboarding and other enhanced techniques were being used. At last week’s press conference she went beyond this position to assert that “the only mention of waterboarding at [the September 2002] briefing was that it was not being employed.”

In contrast, Leon Panetta, the current CIA director, wrote a memo last Friday to CIA employees in which he stated that “our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of [Al Qaeda terrorist] Abu Zubaydah, describing ‘the enhanced techniques that had been employed.’”

And so the question, prior to her rambling press conference, was one of memory: Did Speaker Pelosi remember correctly the briefing she received in 2002?

If she had confined the controversy to her memory versus the CIA’s, Speaker Pelosi may have saved herself. She would be guilty of irresponsibility and incompetence perhaps, but that would basically be it. Not good, but not disqualifying.

Pelosi on the CIA: “They Mislead Us All The Time”

But Speaker Pelosi did not confine the question to the reliability of memory. Instead, she made the allegation last week that the CIA intentionally misled her -- misled Congress -- and not just once, but routinely.

“They mislead us all the time,” she said.

She charged that the CIA, deliberately and as a matter of policy, violated the law by lying to Congress.

And with that allegation, Speaker Pelosi disqualified herself from the office she holds.

Why Did Pelosi Escalate the Controversy into a Full Scale War With the CIA?

And the question that remains is why? Why would Speaker Pelosi escalate the small skirmish she found herself in over the 2002 briefing into a full-scale war with the CIA?

Perhaps it’s because if America knew that Speaker Pelosi consented, fully informed and without complaint, to waterboarding back in 2002, it would reveal the current liberal bloodlust over interrogations for what it is: The Left’s attempt to hunt down and purge its political opponents.

Remember what America was like in September, 2002, less than a year after 9/11.

America was terrified. As I said on ABC Radio last week, our entire defense, intelligence and justice establishment expected that there would be additional al Qaeda attacks, we just didn’t know where and we didn’t know when.

If Pelosi Consented to Waterboarding in 2002, the Bush Policy Is Vindicated

If Nancy Pelosi believed that waterboarding was justified in 2002 -- just like Porter Goss, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Tenet -- then a policy of selectively using enhanced interrogation techniques in carefully circumscribed ways in order to prevent future attacks -- in other words, the Bush Administration policy -- is vindicated.

But rather than admit that President Bush, when faced with an array of difficult choices, made the hard choice that kept the nation safe, Nancy Pelosi has instead retreated into the cheap sanctity of ignorance. She didn’t know, so she claims. That’s why she didn’t do anything about it.

But President Bush did know. It was his job to know, and he made the tough choices needed to save American lives.

It was Nancy Pelosi’s job to know too. But to avoid culpability for the choices she supported, she’s now telling us she didn’t know. And she’s calling the intelligence officials who say otherwise liars and criminals.

Shame on her.

Speaker Pelosi Has Made America Less Safe

Speaker Pelosi has damaged America’s safety.

She’s made America less secure by sending a signal to the men and women defending our country that they can’t count on their leaders to defend them.

And every day they spend worrying about being politically persecuted is a day we are made more vulnerable to a nuclear attack on one of our cities, a biological attack on one of our subways, or a bomb going off in one of our malls.

America is losing ground because of Nancy Pelosi’s contempt for those who defend her.

Democrats owe it to their country and our national security to replace Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House.

Your friend,
Newt Gingrich
_______________________
 Gingrich: Pelosi Step Down as Speaker
John R. Houk
© May 20, 2009
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Why Pelosi Should Step Down

Mr. Gingrich is the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and author of "Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works" and "Winning the Future" (published by Regnery, a HUMAN EVENTS sister company).

Copyright © 2009 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.

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