Pelosi Tattles on Dick Cheney

San Fran Nan is going to have to develop some thicker skin or else she'll be spending all her time on the phone tattling to the president:

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday phoned President Bush to air her complaints over Vice President Dick Cheney's comments that the Congressional Democrats' plan for Iraq would "validate the Al Qaeda strategy."

Pelosi, who said she could not reach the president, said Cheney's comments wrongly questioned critics' patriotism and ignored Bush's call for openness on Iraq strategy.

"You cannot say as the president of the United States, 'I welcome disagreement in a time of war,' and then have the vice president of the United States go out of the country and mischaracterize a position of the speaker of the House and in a manner that says that person in that position of authority is acting against the national security of our country," the speaker said.

The quarrel began in Tokyo, where Cheney used an interview to criticize Pelosi and Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., over their plan to place restrictions on Bush's request for an additional $93 billion for the Iraq war to make it difficult or impossible to send 21,500 extra troops to Iraq.

"I think if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we will do is validate the Al Qaeda strategy," the vice president told ABC News. "The Al Qaeda strategy is to break the will of the American people ... try to persuade us to throw in the towel and come home, and then they win because we quit."

Pelosi, at a news conference in San Francisco, said Cheney's criticism of Democrats was "beneath the dignity of the debate we're engaged in and a disservice to our men and women in uniform, whom we all support."

"And you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to call the president and tell him I disapprove of what the vice president said," Pelosi said. "It has no place in our debate." Bush had previously urged her to call him when a member of his administration stepped over the line by questioning Democrats' patriotism, she said.

What debate? Based on the treatment of the minority GOP by the majority Dems, the last thing the Dems want is an actual debate. If they did, they wouldn't block efforts by the GOP to introduce resolutions of their own supporting the troops and maintaining funding for the war.

And despite the prevailing urban myth, nobody is questioning the patriotism of the Democrats. The GOP does question their judgement and the effects their judgement may have on the war, but nobody in a prominent GOP position has ever called the Dems unAmerican.

San Fran Nan and her bunch need to grow up and quick acting like preschoolers who run to the teacher when someone calls them a bad name.