“President Bush yesterday said Speaker Pelosi’s bipartisan delegation to Syria sends “mixed signals,” implying that Pelosi overstepped her bounds by merely visiting Syria.
In 1997, Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) led a delegation to Colombia at a time when U.S. officials were trying to attach human rights conditions to U.S. security assistance programs. Hastert specifically encouraged Colombian military officials to “bypass” President Clinton and “communicate directly with Congress.”
…a congressional delegation led by Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) which met with Colombian military officials, promising to “remove conditions on assistance” and complaining about “leftist-dominated” U.S. congresses of years past that “used human rights as an excuse to aid the left in other countries.” Hastert said he would to correct this situation and expedite aid to countries allied in the war on drugs and also encouraged Colombian military officials to “bypass the U.S. executive branch and communicate directly with Congress.”
Subsequently, U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Myles Frechette sent a cable complaining that Hastert’s actions had undermined his leverage with the Colombian military leadership.
In other instances, Hastert actually guided congressional staff to unilaterally reach deals with Colombian officials:
House Foreign Affairs Committee staff, at the direction of the Hastert group, would fly to Colombia, meet with the nation’s anti-narcotics police and negotiate the levels and terms of assistance, the scope of the program and the kinds of equipment that would be needed. Rarely were the U.S. diplomatic personnel in our embassy in Bogata consulted about the “U.S.” position in these negotiations, and in a number of instances they were excluded from or not even made aware of the meetings.
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/04/hastert-colombia/
conserv: all the more reason for the necessity of Pelosi’s trip over Hastert’s escapade.
Hopeful: She didn’t misquote anyone. Olmert’s statement merely reinforced her statement that Syria had to take steps before peace talks could take place. You see Olmert has to look tough domestically (standard Israeli politics).
stev: I know the Pac is slanted, but it doesn’t seem anyone else has coverage of this 10 year old story left on their site. Maybe if you Google Hastert Colombia you can find something. Regardless, do you really think they made it up that Hastert went to Colombia?
Ok, here’s another link about his delegation in May 1997 which underscores that he was directly working against Clinton policy:
http://colhrnet.igc.org/newitems/may02/ap_3may02.htm
The above is an AP link, BTW.
To summarize, I am not all that surprised that Bush is annoyed about Pelosi’s trip. However, the fact that he made no mention of the prior Repub congressmen trip strongly suggests that his annoyance was political in nature.
The info. about Hastert shows that foreign trips by SOH’s are not at all unprecedented.
I maintain that the statements that Pelosi contradicted Israel’s position is pure Fox invention and some of the Cons on this site calling for Pelosi to be imprisoned have been shown to be more than hysterical.
Melissa
