PrintFebruary 23, 2007
Pelosi's appalling ignorance (updated)
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made and still carries on her website a breathtakingly untrue charge against President Bush:
"Five years after 9/11 and Osama bin Laden is still free and not a single terrorist who planned 9/11 has been caught and brought to justice. President Bush should read the intelligence carefully before giving another misleading speech about progress in the war on terrorism."
How about Khalid Shaikk Mohammed-the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks? Last time I checked he was imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. Pelosi clearly doesn't read the Wall Street Journal or the 9/11 Commission report. Additionally, Abu Zubaydah was captured-the intelligence community believe he ran a terrorist camp in Afghanistan where some of the 9/11 hijackers trained and that he helped smuggle Al Qaeda leaders out of Afghanistan.
No wonder she moved Jane Harman out of the post she deserved on the House Intelligence Committee and chose to appoint Silvestre Reyes (who cannot tell "Shiite from Sunni") in her stead. Pelosi clearly doesn't want to be upstaged! Third-in-line to the Presidency and she cannot even get her facts right about 9/11.
Maybe Ms. Pelosi and Silvestre Reyes should take this new ABC News poll that measures basic knowledge about the differences between the Shiite and Sunni branches of Islam.
Update: Dennis Sevakis adds:
Pelosi is the shill for people who don't read. Anyone who goes beyond sound bites knows better. She's there to talk to the people who have very short attention spans. That's why she was put in the Speakership position. To talk to the lowest common denominator. To paraphrase Moynihan, she's there's to define dumbness down. She wasn't named Speaker because she's the sharpest tack in the box. To attach substance to nearly anything that she has to say is to push the bounds of credulity.
Update: Ed Lasky writes:
Update: Dennis Sevakis adds:
Pelosi is the shill for people who don't read. Anyone who goes beyond sound bites knows better. She's there to talk to the people who have very short attention spans. That's why she was put in the Speakership position. To talk to the lowest common denominator. To paraphrase Moynihan, she's there's to define dumbness down. She wasn't named Speaker because she's the sharpest tack in the box. To attach substance to nearly anything that she has to say is to push the bounds of credulity.
Update: Ed Lasky writes:
The WSJ pointed out Pelosi verbal shenanigans today (see below)- and how offensive they are. My view of whether justice has been done follows a more common sense defintion of the term"justice". KSM and company are no longer allowed to plan and execute missions against innocent people. They no longer have the freedom they once did to plot and plan-they hopefully face many years in prison. If the "legal sytem" eventually puts the satmp of approval on their imprisonment-that is fine-the cherry on top to satisfy Pelosi and Comapny. For now-as they stew in Gitmo-that is justice served in my book.
Justice Delayed
Our item yesterday on Speaker Nancy Pelosi quoted from a Pelosi press release that claimed, "Not a single terrorist who planned 9/11 has been caught and brought to justice." Several readers took issue with this, most noting the 2003 capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who, shortly before Pelosi made the statement, was transferred from an undisclosed location to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Our item yesterday on Speaker Nancy Pelosi quoted from a Pelosi press release that claimed, "Not a single terrorist who planned 9/11 has been caught and brought to justice." Several readers took issue with this, most noting the 2003 capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who, shortly before Pelosi made the statement, was transferred from an undisclosed location to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
If you look closely at Pelosi's statement, though, you'll see it's actually a dodge. Note that she says caught "and brought to justice"--by which she presumably means found guilty at a trial. But this is a frivolous complaint. For one thing, if the CIA needed access to KSM for a few years to pry information out of him that could stop future terrorist attacks, no sensible person would argue that a quick trial was more important.
For another, no one has been brought to trial at Guantanamo yet because the Supreme Court struck down the military commission system the administration had set up, forcing Congress to pass a new law, which will no doubt take some time to make its way through the courts.
Also, come to think of it, what about Zacarias Moussaoui? He was caught and brought to justice, wasn't he?
