Iraq Policy Losses Cloud Pelosi's Year

Iraq Policy Losses Cloud Pelosi's Year
Published: 1/1/08, 5:45 AM EDT
By ERICA WERNER

WASHINGTON (AP) - Nancy Pelosi crashed through a glass ceiling when she became the first female House speaker a year ago. That turned out to be the easy part.

The reality of leading a bitterly divided Congress at odds with a Republican White House is that victories are difficult and disappointments many. Chief among them for the liberal San Francisco Democrat was failure to deliver on her biggest goal: ceasing U.S. combat missions in Iraq and getting troops on their way home.



The House's final days before winter break were reflective of Pelosi's up-and-down year: a major success - an energy bill including the first increase in vehicle fuel economy standards in 32 years - and two bitter defeats.

Hamstrung by Republican opposition and veto threats from President Bush, Pelosi had to abandon her promise to not add to the budget deficit when the House agreed to a $50 billion tax-relief bill without making up the loss to the Treasury. The House's final vote was on legislation giving Bush $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with no withdrawal deadlines attached.

"The war in Iraq is the biggest disappointment for us, I mean the inability to stop the war in Iraq," Pelosi, 67 and in her 11th House term, said in a recent round-table interview.

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That pretty much says it all to me..A promise is supposed to be a sacred bond. It is not some casual comment. Why make a Promise if you won't do everything within your power to keep it? She could have said she would try or she would work hard toward the goal, but to Promise is being quite absolute. It would have been so much better for her and so many other Democrats to just keep their mouths shut for the most part. I heard many say such and such "will not happen" and then within days we learn that sure enough it is happening just as the GOP wished..I think that is what has upset me the most about this bunch. They seem to make a lot of statements that they can't or won't back up and it leads to me thinking they are not much different than the GOP... LIARS.. It isn't that they are stymied a lot by Republicans, hell we all know how Congress/Politics works, it is that they come and and make announcement in which they are emphatic about what will not occur and then it does...The only thing she has kept her word about is Accountability is "Off the Table"......

It's a shame that most people tend to overlook it and accept the fact that campaign promises are "made to be broken"...

:hi: