Pelosi Exposes Herself as Apologist for Genocide, Unfit To Discuss Impeachment of President Trump

Dec. 9, 2019 (EIRNS)—In a reversal of her earlier position against impeaching President Donald Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is now insisting the House of Representatives file impeachment charges against the President for alleged abuse of power. She claims, in spite of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s assertion that there was no quid pro quo making military aid conditional on the investigation of Joe Biden (which aid has been delivered, without the investigation): “The facts are uncontested. The President abused his power for his own personal political benefit at the expense of our national security, by withholding military aid and a crucial Oval Office meeting in exchange for an announcement of an investigation into his political rival.”

Pelosi, in her response to an audience member at her Dec. 5 CNN town hall meeting, exposed herself either as a deliberate liar, or as a person with a remarkable ability to bend the facts to suit her agenda, regardless of the consequences.

She admitted that in her capacity as Ranking Member of the Intelligence Committee, she opposed the impeachment of President Bush, despite the fact she knew that the basis of the Iraq War was false:

“So, I knew there were no nuclear weapons in Iraq. It just wasn’t there. They had to show us they had to show the Gang of Four all the intelligence they had. The intelligence did not show that that was the case. So, I knew it was a misrepresentation to the public. But having said that, it was, in my view, not a ground for impeachment.”

The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, based on lies which, as Nancy Pelosi now reveals, she knew to be lies in 2003, resulted in more than 1 million Iraqi deaths (around 275,000 direct deaths from the war itself, with an equal number wounded, causing, in the post-war period, more than 1 million civilians to die of starvation and disease), as well as the deaths of over 8,000 American soldiers and contractors, not to mention the devastation of hundreds of thousands of American families whose loved ones are now suffering PTSD or have ended it all by committing suicide, at the rate of 22 veterans per day. The Iraq War also contributed substantially to the refugee crisis, which has destroyed the lives of tens of thousands of additional families, while shattering the credibility of Western values, human rights and democracy in the entire world.

One can only agree with President Trump on this point, that the Iraq War, as part of the post-9/11 policy of endless wars, at a cost of $7 trillion—a sum which was thus not invested in the physical economy of the United States—has been the biggest mistake in U.S. history. As recently as two years ago, Pelosi apparently agreed with President Trump on this point. On CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Nov. 3, 2017, she had said that impeaching President Trump “is not someplace that I think we should go.” She added that many on the left were upset at her for not impeaching President George W. Bush in the wake of the Iraq War. “What could be worse than that?” (i.e., worse than lying to start the Iraq War) she asked.

The fact is, Pelosi did not expose what she has now admitted was a misrepresentation to the public in order to prevent this terrible Iraq War.

Be it memory lapses, or an estranged relationship to truth, Pelosi has zero credibility in respect to the demand for impeaching President Trump. If she has only a shred of conscience left, she should start paying war reparations to the Iraqi people and American families who lost their loved ones as a result of her complicity in that war.

She has no authority to speak on impeachment and should end the fraudulent impeachment attempt against President Trump.

[Iraq casualty figures are from the Costs of War Project at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University; surveys by The Lancet (2004 and 2006); ORB International, 2007; and on-the-ground sources.]