4.04.2007

Open Mouth, Insert Foot

Looks like Nancy Pelosi just got caught with one foot (if not both feet) stuck in her mouth up to the shinbone.

The [Israeli] Prime Minister's Office issued a rare "clarification" Wednesday that, in gentle diplomatic terms, contradicted US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's statement in Damascus that she had brought a message from Israel about a willingness to engage in peace talks.

According to the statement, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert emphasized in his meeting with Pelosi on Sunday that "although Israel is interested in peace with Syria, that country continues to be part of the Axis of Evil and a force that encourages terror in the entire Middle East."

Olmert, the statement clarified, told Pelosi that Syria's sincerity about a genuine peace with Israel would be judged by its willingness to "cease its support of terror, cease its sponsoring of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations, refrain from providing weapons to Hizbullah and bringing about the destabilizing of Lebanon, cease its support of terror in Iraq, and relinquish the strategic ties it is building with the extremist regime in Iran."

The statement said Olmert had not communicated to Pelosi any change in Israeli policy on Damascus.

If Pelosi had any brains at all, she'd have realized that Olmert's office would immediately correct the errors in her statement. Perhaps she thought they'd be too intimidated by The First Female Speaker of the House of Representatives to contradict her, but even that stretches credibility to the breaking point and possibly beyond... the Israelis have stood up to the Arabs that outnumber them many times over since 1948, why would they buckle to one woman with a swelled head?

Maybe Pelosi is just the sort of person who needs 10 minutes each morning to figure out which shoe goes on which foot.

Hat Tip: Captain's Quarters.