Did Bush Pressure Olmert to Deny Pelosi’s Statement about Syria?

Posted by Jon Ponder
Pensito Review

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi left Israel last week, her delegation announced she was bearing a message from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Bashar al-Assad, the president-for-life of Syria.

This suggests that the Bush White House may have also tried to “order” the speaker not to meet with Assad, only to find itself tripped up again by the inconvenience of the separation of powers in the Constitution. Since they couldn’t stop Pelosi’s visit, the next best option was to ruin it, which was likely accomplished with a single phone call.

In Syria, Pelosi’s meeting with Assad made good visuals: A Democratic leader was taking charge of putting Israel back on a path to negotiations with its Arab neighbors. Commentators noted that the speaker was carrying out a key recommendation of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group — engaging governments in the Middle East in dialogue — that the Bush administration has stubbornly refused to do.

Within hours, however, the Israeli government issued a statement that essentially called the U.S. Speaker of the House a liar by flatly denying Olmert asked Pelosi to convey anything to Assad.

(Continued here.)