Apparently endorsing a Qatari interpretation (which is not a stretch to assume given her San Francisco district) of Hamas, Representative Pelosi said:
Hamas "is a humanitarian organization," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told CNN's Candy Crowley on Sunday in a discussion of how the U.S. should handle the Islamist extremist group's conflict with Israel.
How does she know? The Qataris "have told me over and over again."
She was once the Speaker of the House of Representatives. I shudder to recall that sad fact.
Yes, Hamas provides food and other things to bolster their political support. But our State Department says that Hamas is a terrorist organization.
The news on any given day will verify that.
If you want to call Hamas a humanitarian organization because they distribute food and provide medical care, you'd have to call America's military a humanitarian organization, too.
Would Representative Pelosi and her left-leaning constituents say that because the American military is first into action in any major natural disaster that our military is a humanitarian organization?
Would they say that because in Iraq and Afghanistan our military appealed to hearts and minds with medical care and food and civilian construction projects to pay local civilians that the American military is a humanitarian organization?
Obviously, the vast majority would not say that.
Nor would they excuse American military action--action that attempts to distinguish between military and civilian targets and avoid harming the latter--as merely the actions of the "militant wing" of the "humanitarian organization" that should not reduce the legitimacy of the latter.
Yes, after the fact, the army of aides that Ms. Pelosi employs as her offics staff issued a clarification. But her quotes are her views while the clarification is the post-interview reaction of her staff to the criticism of that view to minimize the damage to her for saying those views out loud rather than directly to constituents in private.
She really couldn't pour water out of a boot if the instructions were written--over and over--on the heel. But days or hours later, the staff will step in to empty the boot.
