Who makes foreign policy in the USA?

[Drake Tungsten]

The hits keep on coming...

A top U.S. Democratic congressman met a leader of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's most powerful rival, the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, U.S. officials and the Islamist group said Saturday.

Visiting House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer met with the head of the Muslim Brotherhood's parliamentary bloc, Mohammed Saad el-Katatni, twice on Thursday -- once at the parliament building and then at the home of the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, said Brotherhood spokesman Hamdi Hassan.

U.S. Embassy spokesman John Berry would confirm only that Hoyer, who represents Maryland, met with el-Katatni at U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone's home at a reception with other politicians and parliament members.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has refused in the past to meet with the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's largest opposition group...

Hoyer's meeting came just a day after Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi drew sharp criticism from the Bush administration for meeting with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus.

Pelosi and other Democrats argue the administration needs to engage Syria to resolve some of the most intractable problems in the Middle East, such as Iraq and the Israeli-Arab conflict. But the Bush administration rejects that approach, accusing Syria of exacerbating the troubles in neighboring Iraq and Lebanon.

Jon Alterman, a Mideast specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Bush administration officials may have avoided meeting Muslim Brotherhood members because it could strain relations with the secular Egyptian government, one of the closest U.S. allies in the Arab world.

"The difficulty when it gets to Egypt is that the Brotherhood is not a legal group within Egypt and the U.S. government is wary of violating laws in countries in which it operates," he told The Associated Press on Saturday.

"The larger constraint on our willingness to meet the Brotherhood is the Egyptian government's unease with our government's meeting with the Brotherhood."

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/04/07/egypt.hoyer.ap/index.html

[Arrian]

Ned,

Bush *is* stupid and incompetant and unfit to govern. It does not necessarily follow, however, that the Dems are smart, competant and fit to govern. Unfortunately.

Talk radio will rot your brain.

-Arrian

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
What did Pelosi's visit have to do with the "pursuance of her legislative duties under the Constitution"?

Anyway, who cares whether Pelosi should have gone to Syria or not? That ship has already sailed. Now we should be discussing how much damage she did...

A question posed by house and senate GOP's

Today, GOP Leaders from both chambers urged Speaker Pelosi to call the House back into session immediately to finish its work on the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill for the troops. Speaker Pelosi neglected to appoint House conferees before the two-week break, further delaying negotiations on a final bill. The joint letter to Pelosi is attached. Text follows:

Dear Speaker Pelosi:

We are writing to urge you to call the House back into session immediately so that Congress can finish its work on the emergency legislation to fund the Global War on Terrorism. This funding request has been pending since February 5, but your leadership team chose to leave town for more than two weeks rather than completing this bill. As a result, our troops have been put at risk.

We are especially troubled by the House's failure to appoint conferees. The Senate appointed conferees on March 29, moments after passing its bill, but the House never did so despite passing the bill a week earlier. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the Senate that he hoped the House-Senate conference would begin on March 30. That hoped-for progress has been thwarted by your failure to act.

It should go without saying that our military leaders are in the best position to know the needs of our troops, and they have left no doubt that this funding is needed urgently. General Peter Schoomaker, United States Army Chief of Staff, has written that, "without approval of the supplemental funds in April, we will be forced to take increasingly draconian measures which will impact Army readiness and impose hardships on our Soldiers and their families." Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has also emphasized the dangers of delay: "This kind of disruption to key programs will have a genuinely adverse effect on the readiness of the Army and the quality of life for soldiers and their families."

Our troops need this funding, and they need it soon. The Senate is in session and ready to work. We respectfully request that you cancel the remainder of your break, call the House back into session, appoint conferees promptly, and work in good faith to pass a clean supplemental funding bill that the President can sign as soon as possible. Every day we don't fund our troops is a day their ability to fight this war is weakened.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Arrian
Ned,

Bush *is* stupid and incompetant and unfit to govern. It does not necessarily follow, however, that the Dems are smart, competant and fit to govern. Unfortunately.

I thought that was axiomatic.

[Dinner]

I laughed my ass off when I read this one. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has been an extremely vocal whiner about Pelosi's photo op in Damascus but he ignores that as Speaker Gingrich did the same thing but was even more vocal about it. I also note that the hacks who are spinning this also cheered Gingrich when he did the same.

FLASHBACK: Gingrich Thrust Himself Into Mideast Questions As Speaker, Bashed White House Policy
By Greg Sargent | bio

Paging CNN...

One politician who's been getting some airtime as a critic of Nancy Pelosi's trip to Syria is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. A few days ago he hammered Pelosi for going abroad in defiance of the White House's wishes, saying that such defiance of the White House by Congressional leaders was "very dangerous."

But as Speaker himself in May of 1998, Gingrich aggressively inserted himself into American foreign policymaking abroad when he took a high-powered Congressional delegation to Israel. He openly denounced the White House's Middle East policies and made public comments in direct defiance of the White House. Right before his trip he even described then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as an "agent for the Palestinians."

In other words, despite the fact that the White House opposed her trip to Syria, Pelosi -- who claims she delivered the White House's message, unlike Gingrich -- has in many ways been more respectful of the White House than Gingrich was on his trip abroad. Yet CNN somehow can still ask without any irony whether Pelosi is on her way to becoming the "most controversial House Speaker yet."

From ABC News, May 27, 1998:

DAVID ENSOR, ABC News: (voice-over) It's beginning to look as if the days when American partisan politics ended at the water's edge may be over.

Rep. NEWT GINGRICH (R), Speaker of the House:... Jerusalem, as the united and eternal capital of Israel.

DAVID ENSOR: (voice-over) That runs directly contrary to official US policy, which holds that Jerusalem's future is a matter for negotiation between Palestinians and Israelis.

Next, Speaker Gingrich took on the Clinton administration's effort to convince Israel to give up about 13 percent more of the West Bank. He said, quote, "We cannot allow non- Israelis to substitute their judgment for the generals that Israel has trusted with its security." The non-Israelis in question are Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her aides, one of whom reacted sharply.

JAMES RUBIN, State Department Spokesman: Rather stunning comments that would undermine the efforts we're trying to make to advance America's national interest.

DAVID ENSOR: (voice-over) But it was a comment made two weeks ago that has Albright's team simmering with anger. "I think it's wrong," Gingrich said then, "for the American secretary of state to become the agent for the Palestinians."

JAMES RUBIN: I found particularly appalling an outrageous his suggestion that the secretary of state of the United States was an agent for the Palestinians.

But here's how Gingrich slammed Pelosi's trip to Syria a few days ago:

I don't understand why, as Speaker of the House, she would be going to see a dictator in Damascus when the White House has publicly asked her not to go there. I think it's very dangerous for America to start having 535 secretaries of state and 535 secretaries of defense, all of whom happen to be elected to the U.S. Congress, none of whom were appointed to those jobs.

Why is anyone in the media quoting Gingrich on this? If anyone has less than zero credibility on it, it's he.

Yet here he is getting quoted on MSNBC bashing Pelosi's trip, with no mention whatsoever that Gingrich in many ways did things that were far worse, and CNN is already comparing Pelosi negatively to Newt. Thoroughly bogus.

http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/apr/06/flashback_gingrich_visited_israel_as_speaker_blasted_presidents_foreign_policy

So basically we have a bunch of lying hypocritical Republican hacks whining about nothing important. Completely bogus indeed.

[Dinner]

Pelosi's comments aren't even remotely in that league in terms of consciously undermining the executive. But hey, she wore a hijab, so it must be worse.

[Drake Tungsten]

May Pelosi end up like Gingrich.

[Dinner]

This just shows how desperate the Republican hacks were to change the news cycle. Before this all the news programs were giving wall to wall coverage of how the Administration was attempting to obstruct justice by firing US Attorneys who dared to investigate Republican corruption.

[DinoDoc]

A potential Presidential candidate? She can't even manage making eyes at a disctator without screwing something up. She can only hope she ends up like Newt.

[Drake Tungsten]

A potential Presidential candidate?

No. Tossed out of her leadership position by her own party...

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Oerdin
This just shows how desperate the Republican hacks were to change the news cycle.

Do they control the Washington Post, USA Today, and CNN?

[Dinner]

You don't have to own anything these days. The media is lazy and wants someone to write their stories for them so the party hacks practically hand "reporters" finished propaganda pieces these days. Hell, most of the "research groups" are just a place the parties retire their old hacks too. Their job is mostly to churn out partisan junk, call it research, and get the media to run it.

[Kuciwalker]

Funny how only the Republicans ever manage this.

[Kuciwalker]

.

[Ramo]

U.S. Embassy spokesman John Berry would confirm only that Hoyer, who represents Maryland, met with el-Katatni at U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone's home at a reception with other politicians and parliament members.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has refused in the past to meet with the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's largest opposition group...

Part of the Admin's wonderful "democracy promotion" policy in Egypt, where we don't bat an eye when Mubarak bans the MB from standing in elections or flagrantly fixes votes. This whole "scandal" is ironic given that if Assad were to hold a free election, the Syrian branch of the MB would overwhelmingly sweep into power.