Thursday, June 09, 2005
Downing Street Minutes 'Too Hot To Handle'
John Byrne of The Raw Story interviews House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on such topics as the Downing Street minutes, Iraq and Tom De Lay: link. It's a great read (par for the course at The Raw Story), but here's my favorite part:
Raw Story: "Are there particular issues where you saw the blogs focused on any issue that really stuck with you or you learned something from?"
Pelosi: "I think the most recent was the Downing Street memo. Imagine—you know, 1,700 of our troops have died, tens of thousands of Iraqis killed—all of this and we still cannot have truth and trust in how we got there in the first place. I knew at the time as a senior Democrat on the [House] Intelligence Committee that the intelligence did not support the threat. They can say all they want about the failures of intelligence and it never said we have an imminent threat, we have to go to war. So the currency that you all have given the Downing Street memo is very important, because whatever has happened has happened, but we have really gotten to get to the bottom of it."
Pelosi: "And I know it’s out there with you all because I go all around the country all the time. And last week we were out of session, and more people asked me about the Downing Street memo, and I said, you know what, I really haven’t seen much about it in the news, and then I realized it was on the blogs. And the ethics rules changes, that was really helpful. It really made a difference; more people understood what was happening, that they would change the rules to protect one person. They would say, their leader was above the law. And they would go so far as to stoop to that. It’s an inside baseball thing and not everybody gets it, except you did, and the bloggers did, and that was really important in creating public opinion in the country. It made the issue too hot to handle."
Pelosi: "I think that’s what I would say, is that some of what you do makes the issue too hot to handle for them, in a way that we really have an obstacle of getting the message out in D.C."
Also...
Congressman John Conyers announced today that there will be a congressional hearing held on the Downing Street minutes next Thursday: Daily Kos diary.
The Raw Story has more on that, as well: link.
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