Pelosi Supported Increased Troop Levels in 2004

Matt Naugle at Human Events' Rightometer found part of the excerpt that follows at Rush Limbaugh's web site; I looked for more, since Rush's content will disappear behind his subscriber wall shortly.

Fortunately, I found a Google cache transcript of the entire interview involved. Its original address was:

democraticleader.house.gov/ press/articles.cfm?pressReleaseID=590

In other words, what follows is from an officially released May 30, 2004 interview of Nancy Pelosi by Tim Russert. At the time, what Pelosi said was blessed by the party, and what she said is that there should be more troops in Iraq (bolds are mine):

MR. RUSSERT: What would you do in Iraq today right now?

REP. PELOSI: What I would do and what I think our country must do in Iraq is take an assessment of where we are. And there has to be a leveling with the American people and with the Congress of the United States as to what is really actually happening there. It's very hard to say what you would do. We need more troops on the ground. General...Shinseki said this from the start, when you make an appraisal about whether you're going to war; you have to know what you need.

MR. RUSSERT: So you would put more American troops on the ground?

REP. PELOSI: What I'm saying to you, that we need more troops on the ground. I think it would be better if we could get them to be not American that we could appeal to our European allies, NATO...

MR. RUSSERT: But if they say no, would you put more American troops on the ground?

REP. PELOSI: The clear and present danger facing the United States is terrorism. We have to solidify; we have to stabilize the situation in Iraq. As Secretary of State [Colin Powell] has said, "You break it, you own it." We have a responsibility now in Iraq And we have to get more troops on the ground. But when General Shinseki said we need 300,000 troops, Secretary Wolfowitz said "wildly off the mark," because they knew a commitment of 300,000 troops would not be acceptable to the American people. So they went in with false assumptions about rose petals, not rocket-propelled grenades, and we're in this fix now...

MR. RUSSERT: Would you send more American troops in order to stabilize the situation?

REP. PELOSI: Yes. And let me just say this, we must internationalize the situation. We cannot take no for an answer. We have to use our diplomacy to the fullest extent to get more international troops on the ground. And we have to truly internationalize and Iraqitize the situation.

"Internationalization" was a dumb argument then and it's dumb now. Why? Well, there has been, and still is, an international coalition against the War on Terror. I think when a Democrat says "internationalize," it means "if we don't have France, it doesn't count." But (oops), France IS in the War on Terror coalition. How "internationalized" do things need to be?

Anyway, I look forward to tonight's Democratic response to President Bush's speech demanding a stronger "surge" than he is advocating. What's different now?