From the CNN interview Dec. 5, 2019
DEAN CHIEN, STUDENT, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY: So, Speaker Pelosi, you resisted calls for the impeachment of President Bush in 2006, and President Trump, following the Mueller report earlier this year.
This time it's different. Why did you impose - why did you oppose impeachment in the past? And what is your obligation to protect our democracy from the actions of our President now?
PELOSI: Thank you. Thank you for bringing up the question about - because when I became Speaker the first time, there was overwhelming call for me to impeach President Bush, on the strength of the war in Iraq, which I vehemently opposed, and again not - again, I - I say "Again," I said - said at other places that I - that was my we - all has always (ph) Intelligence.
I was Ranking Member on the Intelligence Committee even before I became part of the leadership of Gang of Four. So, I knew there were no nuclear weapons in Iraq. It just wasn't there.
They had to show us now - to show the Gang of Four all the Intelligence they had. The Intelligence did not show that that - that was the case. So, I knew it was a - a misrepresentation to the public. But having said that, it was a, in my view, not a ground for impeachment. That was - they won the election. They made a representation. And to this day, people think - people think that that it was the right thing to do.
If people think that Iraq had something to do with the 9/11, I mean it's as appalling what they did. But I did - and I've said, if somebody wants to make a case, you bring it forward.
An excerpt from Commentary by Lambert Strether . The whole thing is worth reading.
(Remarkably, or not, Pelosi kept her knowledge that the Iraq War was built on lies secret from the public. This doesn’t strike me as the right approach to “a Republic, if you can keep it.”) First, apparently a President’s “misrepresentation to the public” that led to war — a war that resulted, even in the early years of the war, in tens of thousands of civilian deaths, thousands of American deaths, hundreds of billions of dollars, and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal — is not a “high crime or misdemeanor.” Pelosi would have us believe that Bush’s disinformation campaign was not, as Madison writes in Federalist 65, a case of “misconduct of public men, or, in other words…the abuse or violation of some public trust.” And why? Because “[Bush] won the election.” Except Pelosi gets the timeline wrong. Bush won his election in 2004. The Democrats took back the House in 2006 — how we cheered, then; it was almost as satisfying as Obama’s inaugural — based in large part on Bush’s botched handling of Iraq. Pelosi “won the election.” And then didn’t do anything with her power.
Let’s ask a little consistency from our Chief Prosecutor, shall we? Because that’s what justice demands? If “misrepresentation to the public the public” in service of taking the country into war — the aluminum tubes, the yellowcake, all the whackamole lies that Bush put forth — is not impeachable, then how on earth is what Trump did, even under the very worst intepretation, impeachable? Are we really going to convict Trump because he — Bud from Legal insists I insert the word “allegedly” — tried to muscle Zelensky? Here is what Turley, who approached his statement as a lawyer would, did with that accusation.