Cheney scolds Pelosi for traveling to Syria

WASHINGTON – Vice President Dick Cheney scolded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday for her “bad behavior” in traveling to Syria, a country that he said promotes terrorism.

In a conversation with fellow conservative Rush Limbaugh on Limbaugh’s radio show, Cheney belittled Pelosi’s public statement after her meeting in Damascus on Wednesday with Syrian President Bashar Assad.

“It was a non-statement, a nonsensical statement and didn’t make any sense at all that she would suggest that those talks could go forward as long as the Syrians conducted themselves as a prime state sponsor of terror,” Cheney said.

In her statement, Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, said: “We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace.”

The White House has been taking shots at Pelosi’s Middle East trip all week, but none has been more colorful than Cheney’s comments.

“This is a bad actor,” the vice president said of Syria’s president, “and until he changes his behavior, he should not be rewarded with visits by the speaker of the House of Representatives.”

Encouraged by Limbaugh, who asked him, “Don’t you get enraged when this kind of thing happens?” Cheney said he was “obviously disappointed” in Pelosi.

“Fortunately,” he said, “I think the various parties involved recognize she doesn’t speak for the United States in those circumstances, she doesn’t represent the administration. The president is the one who conducts foreign policy, not the speaker of the House.”

Limbaugh also asked Cheney about President Bush’s recess appointment Wednesday of St. Louis businessman Sam Fox as ambassador to Belgium. Fox had been nominated for that post, but the White House withdrew his name last week when it became apparent that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee opposed him and the full Senate might not have confirmed him.

During the 2004 campaign, Fox contributed $50,000 to the controversial Swift Boat veterans’ campaign against Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential candidate. Kerry, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, led the opposition to Fox’s nomination.

The recess appointment, made during the Senate’s scheduled spring break, allows Fox to serve until almost the end of Bush’s presidency. Some Democrats were questioning the legality of the appointment, since the White House had officially withdrawn Fox’s nomination.

But State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday that Fox, a wealthy GOP fundraiser, had agreed to serve without salary. Under federal salary laws, he said, recess appointees are paid only if their nomination was pending at the time of the appointment or if the vacancy occurred within 30 days of the appointment. Neither is the case here, he said.

Limbaugh, calling Fox a “great American,” said the recess appointment showed the administration was “willing to engage these people and not allow them to get away with this kind of – well, my term, you don’t have to accept it – Stalinist behavior from those people on that committee.”

“Well, you’re dead on, Rush.” Cheney replied.