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Originally Posted by spence
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not unique or original....guess they are just "taking a more assertive role regarding a president who is a deceiver"
4/4/2007
DAMASCUS, Syria — U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday for talks criticized by the White House as undermining American efforts to isolate the hard-line Arab country.
Pelosi’s visit to Syria was the latest challenge to the White House by congressional Democrats, who are taking a more assertive role in influencing policy in the Middle East and the Iraq war.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17920536/n.../#.VP61vfnF86w
about 10 years ago. Jim McDermott(D-Mich.) and two other anti-war liberal congressmen traveled to Iraq in September 2002 as the Bush administration tried to persuade Congress to authorize military action against Saddam Hussein. Joining McDermott were Rep. David Bonior (D-Mich.) and Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.).
On September 29, 2002, the Iraqi government eagerly positioned McDermott and Bonior for an interview with ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Right on cue, McDermott mouthed the Iraqi Baathist Party line, declaring that President George W. Bush “will lie to the American people in order to get us into war.”
When an incredulous Stephanopoulos pushed McDermott for clarification, asking if he stood by his claim that the president would intentionally lie to drag the nation into war, the congressman held firm: “I think the president would mislead the American people.” The Seattle congressman deduced that Bush and the administration would “give out misinformation … information that is not provable.” When Stephanopoulos asked for evidence of Bush’s lying, McDermott didn’t proffer any, simply reaffirming his conviction that the president was a deceiver.
Stephanopoulos seemed taken aback when McDermott suspended the same suspicion toward his endearing Iraqi hosts. Whereas Bush operated on duplicity, McDermott said of Saddam and his regime: “I think you have to take the Iraqis on their face value.”
of course there was Ted Kennedy and Russia....Pelosi was asked/warned by every living Secretary of State not to go to Syria and it was discovered that Mc Dermott & Co.'s little trist was financed by the Hussein Regime
if you want to have a little fun GOOGLE "Syria Deadline" and "IRAN Deadline"
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"On that last point, it has become the approach of transnational progressives to circumvent the Constitution’s treaty requirements. Presidents sign bilateral or multilateral international agreements that often contain statist and counter-constitutional provisions that no president (except maybe Obama) would dare propose as legislation.
On the basis of all this, the international lawyers and organizations such as the United Nations, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the European Union — all of which have an interest in being able to trump the U.S. Constitution’s protections of individual liberty and American sovereignty — begin to argue that the unratified agreement has transmogrified into “customary international law”; thus, the argument goes, lest it be considered an international outlaw, the United States must abide by the terms of the agreement even if the Senate has not ratified it.
This hocus-pocus works, at least as a practical matter, because the Senate fails to defend its institutional turf by speaking up and conveying dissent in a formal way. Senators seem to think they need do no more than resist approving international agreements. But as we’re seeing with Obama’s Iran negotiations, they are sometimes not even asked to approve. In any event, it is not sufficient to refrain from saying “yes”; the Senate needs to take unambiguous action by saying “no.”"
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/415104/print