HOW HE SEES IT A venomous atmosphere in the capital

By PHILIP GAILEY
ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
It takes courage to speak the truth in Washington these days. Just ask House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California, a critic of President Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq, or Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who refuses to go along with another round of Bush tax cuts. Both were set upon last week by rabid Republican attack dogs who questioned Pelosi's patriotism and insulted McCain's heroic military service to his country.
On the same day that Bush went to Capitol Hill to reassure Republican lawmakers worried about the chaos in Iraq and the president's sinking poll numbers, Pelosi told reporters Bush's handling of the war in Iraq demonstrates "an incompetence in terms of knowledge, judgment and experience."
She went on: "This president should have known ... when you decide to go to war you have to know what the consequences of your action are and how you can accomplish the mission. There was plenty of intelligence to say there would be chaos in Iraq following the fall of Baghdad."
Bush's policy "of ignoring his own State Department about what would happen after the fall of Baghdad and ignoring the intelligence as to the chaotic situation that would exist ... carries with it a responsibility for the costs of the war. And that's not only the president, that is all of us any time we vote to send our young people into harm's way."
"The results of his action are what undermine his leadership, not my statements," Pelosi added. "The emperor has no clothes. When are people going to face this reality?"
To listen to the Republican reaction, you would have thought Pelosi had burned an American flag and offered to post bail for Saddam Hussein. Her critics went berserk and then went ballistic.
Denouncement
Marc Racicot, chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign, denounced Pelosi's remarks as a "reprehensible attempt to blame America for the actions of terrorists."
Rep. Tom Reynolds of New York, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, accused Pelosi of undermining troop morale "by saying they are dying needlessly and are risking their lives on a shallow mission." He told Pelosi to "go back to her pastel-colored condo in San Francisco and keep her views to herself."
House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois suggested the Democratic leader's words were aiding the enemy. "We are in the middle of a war and in the middle of a political campaign," he said. "Mrs. Pelosi's comments were meant to inspire her political base, but who else do they inspire?"
Go back and read Pelosi's remarks again and ask yourself if her words go beyond the bounds of fair criticism. Or if they undermine the war effort, aid the enemy or demoralize U.S. troops. The atmosphere in Washington is as partisan and ugly and poisonous as I've ever seen it, partly because of divisions over the war. To even question the administration's Iraq policy is to risk being denounced as unpatriotic by Republican hawks. They brook no dissent or honest inquiry, not even inside their own party.
John Warner, the Virginia Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, has come under fire from members of his own party for refusing to short-circuit his panel's hearings into the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. To his credit, Warner is more interested in seeking the truth behind this scandal than protecting the administration in an election year.
From Hastert
Even more shameful, some GOP leaders in Congress stooped to a new low in going after McCain for daring to speak the truth. Hastert, furious with McCain for opposing Bush's tax cuts, suggested that the senator is a Republican in name only and that this former Vietnam POW and torture survivor does not know the meaning of sacrifice.
What set Hastert off was McCain's statement that instead of offering more tax cuts to well-off Americans in this time of war, Congress should be calling on the nation to share in the sacrifice military families are making.
"Young men and women are putting everything on the line so we can be free," McCain told his Senate colleagues. "And what have we sacrificed? Name one thing that Congress has told the special interests and their fat-cat lobbyists to do without since this war began ... At a time of national crisis, we have thrown caution to the wind and continue to spend, and spend, and spend -- all the while cutting taxes."
So Hastert, whose r & eacute;sum & eacute; does not include military service, has the nerve to lecture a war hero on the meaning of sacrifice. The good House speaker suggested that McCain could learn something about sacrifice by visiting wounded soldiers in military hospitals (by the way, Mr. Speaker, McCain does so regularly).
McCain spoke as a true patriot, making a point other Republicans don't want to hear: That this White House and this Congress are recklessly spending the nation into bankruptcy while U.S. soldiers and their families are asked to make all the sacrifices.
Oh, yes. While Pelosi and McCain were taking hostile fire last week, John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, was missing in action.
XPhilip Gailey is editor of editorials for the St. Petersburg Times. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.