Speaker Pelosi on Upcoming Testimony from Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus

  These are some of Speaker Pelosi's comments on which she gave at her weekly news conference in which she was also joined by Ike Skelton, Howard Berman and Rahm Emanuel.

Ms. Pelosi. How is this war in Iraq helping us fight the war on terrorism, the real war on terrorism, Afghanistan? General Mullen says we don’t have enough troops to go there with the commitment in Iraq.

How is this impacting our readiness, our capability to protect the American people wherever our interests are threatened? Admiral Mullen says we don’t have any troops on the shelf to meet those needs.

How is this affecting our economy, another part of our strength? We have heard over and over again the unfairness of the opportunity costs of this war which is driving us into debt, which is driving us into recession, and the American people are paying the costs.

Ms. Pelosi. What I hope we don’t hear from General Petraeus next week is any glorification of what has just happened in Basra and a presentation that says that the Iraqi forces went in there, did the job, violence is diminished, mission accomplished, because the fact is there are many questions that arise in relationship to Basra.

First of all, the word is that they told us 48 hours in advance only about the engagement. Why didn’t we know? Don’t we have an intelligence operation in Iraq? So I don’t know what’s worse: they only gave us 24 hours notice, or we didn’t know in the first place.

Second of all, they weren’t winning this engagement on their own. It wasn’t until the U.S. came in to help that the resolution came about.

Third of all, the diminution of violence in Iraq is in the hands of others. It is beyond our control. Al Sadr established the terms under which he would freeze the violence from his side, terms probably dictated from Iran and accepted like that by the al Maliki government.

So we have to know the real ground truth of what is happening there, not put a shine on events because of the resolution that looks less violent, when it has in fact been dictated by someone, al Sadr, who can grant or withhold that call for violence or not.

Mr. Skelton. The Speaker mentioned Iran’s participation in the Basra area. Iran is the bull in the China shop in all of this. And they seem to have links to all of the Shiite groups, whether they be political or whether they be military. And it’s rather ironic that Iraq, the mortal enemy of Iran, now has at least in part ties to that country.

Mr. Emanuel. One thing. Every event in Iraq cannot be a justification for the policy of more troops, more time and more money. Violence goes down; we need more troops, more time, more money. Violence goes up; we need more troops more time more money. Not every event in Iraq can get us into a position which we find ourselves in, which is a policy cul de sac, and we just keep going around and around.     Article

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