House Speaker Pelosi gets Respect she deserves in Iraq

Although maybe not what she THINKS she deserves.

From Time Magazine, Pelosi gets quiet reaction in Iraq:

The arrival of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who came to Baghdad on Saturday with a congressional delegation, set off a now-familiar cycle of reaction in the Iraqi capital. First there was buzz around the city about flight delays from Baghdad International Airport, which goes into lockdown when VIPs land or takeoff. Since no dust storms were grounding flights, anyone traveling could have assumed some American bigwig was heading in.

Contrary to what most Americans are led to believe by the Democrats and the media, the Iraqi people LIKE America, and are generally excited to see who is showing up. But:

But when local TV reported the visitor was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, there was a collective shrug of the kind you might expect from Republicans catching a glimpse of her somewhere in McCain country.

If they knew what Pelosi would do to them if she got her way, they'd be a lot more concerned. As it is, they only know a little more than what OUR media tells America about the 2nd-most-powerful person in our government:

If they know who she is at all, she is generally seen as an antiwar caricature figure, someone whose views on U.S. troop withdrawals are widely considered unrealistic. Pelosi has said she wants to see most U.S. troops withdrawn from Iraq by the end of the 2008, a time frame virtually no Iraqi political leader sees as feasible. Not even Mahdi Army militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr, the fiercest advocate of a U.S. withdrawal on the scene, has called for such a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces. Rather, Sadr contends that the Americans should simply announce a reasonable timetable for the departure of U.S. forces.

When you are to the LEFT of the terrorists, when the enemy even thinks your surrender terms are too generous, you really should quit your commander-in-chief job. Of course, as House speaker Pelosi has NO business talking about troop withdraw or any other aspect of what the military is doing in the war. On the other hand, she should be running a democratic institution, but instead she has turned the House into a puppet body, a sham political charade where committees are bypassed and votes are not only held open long after they should close, but are altered when they turn out the "wrong way".

So whatever contempt the Iraqi leader has for Pelosi, it is well-deserved:

The lack of popularity of Pelosi's views was evident in the fact that her first day on the ground Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki did not make an effort to see her. Maliki is currently in the northern city of Mosul overseeing a crackdown on insurgent networks there. But the city has been largely quiet in recent days, and there was no obvious pressing reason for the prime minister to skip Pelosi's arrival.

How about, he has no interest in wasting his time listening to her pretending the war isn't being won, and her hysteric calls for quitting the fight.

Time magazine even reminds us that she was on the wrong side of history on the troop surge:

Pelosi may not get much more warmth from the American military leaders she plans to meet either. Pelosi argued against sending additional surge forces to Iraq, a plan overseen by Gen. David Petraeus that is now widely credited with reducing the levels of violence in Iraq.

Let's never forget that. If Pelosi had had her way last year, she would NOT have been able to have this peaceful visit to Iraq. Instead, Iraq would be in turmoil, and our troops would be poised on the borders waiting the inevitable call to go back in at a high cost of life to re-gain what would have been lost by Pelosi's "tactics".

Oh, and then there's the small matter of her claiming our troops are criminals:

Moreover, Pelosi made waves on Capitol Hill in November by saying U.S. troops were torturing detainees - an accusation generally not taken well by men and women in uniform of any rank.

Especially when it's false.

Time contrasts the enemy's reaction to Pelosi's visit to Iraq with Secretary Rice's visit:

But for all of Pelosi's unpopularity, in many ways she got a nicer arrival treatment than the last senior female American official to appear in Baghdad, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Rice slipped into Iraq in January much the same way Pelosi did today — stealthily, with a terse confirmation by the U.S. embassy offering few details of the agenda. But within hours of Rice's arrival, TV news was crackling with word of it, and soon thereafter a volley of mortars fell on the Green Zone in an obvious message from Rice's detractors. No rockets or mortars were heard heading into the Green Zone today as word of Pelosi's presence hit the Iraqi airwaves in what amounted to a daytime news blip.

Well, the terrorists will always try to kill their enemies. Why would they target Pelosi, who is doing their bidding in Congress? The worst thing that the terrorists could do would be to take out sympathisers.