Recently, the White House has launched partisan attacks against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for taking a trip to Syria, while refusing to criticize similar Republican delegations.

Yesterday, former President Jimmy Carter revealed that he was barred from visiting Syria last year when he was abroad monitoring the Palestinian elections: “I have known President Bashar al-Assad since he was a college student, and I thought it might be helpful if I went and urged him to support the peace process in the Middle East. But for the only time in my life as a former president, I was ordered by the White House not to go.” Watch it:

Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, also praised Pelosi’s trip, stating, “It’s long overdue, as a matter of fact.” He added, “When there is a crisis, the best way to help resolve the crisis is to deal with the people who are instrumental in the problem.”

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Yesterday, President Bush visited Fort Irwin, California, the main desert training camp where most U.S. soldiers are sent before deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. Bush told the troops:

Ours is a remarkable country when people volunteer to serve our country in a time of war. The amazing thing about our United States military is thousands and thousands have signed up knowing full well that we’re a nation at war. The government didn’t say, you have to do this, you chose to do it on your own. You decided to put your country ahead of self in many ways.

That message must have resonated in a unique way for some of the soldiers present. As Salon.com’s Mark Benjamin reported recently, Fort Irwin is where some soldiers with debilitating injuries and other medical conditions, including female soldiers who were pregnant, were deployed for weeks:

Hernandez is one of a dozen soldiers who stayed for weeks in those tents who were interviewed for this report, some of whose medical records were also reviewed by Salon. All of the soldiers said they had no business being sent to Fort Irwin given their physical condition. In some cases, soldiers were sent there even though their injuries were so severe that doctors had previously recommended they should be considered for medical retirement from the Army.

Military experts say they suspect that the deployment to Fort Irwin of injured soldiers was an effort to pump up manpower statistics used to show the readiness of Army units. With the military increasingly strained after four years of war, Army readiness has become a critical part of the debate over Iraq.

As Steve Benen noted, Bush’s remarks to the soldiers yesterday hardly produced the rally-like atmosphere of years past. Reuters reported that troops “sat quietly at their lunch tables, some joined by family members, as Bush spoke.” The Houston Chronicle’s Julie Mason described the event as “less than a rally, more than a stare-down,” and said the troops were “strangely quiet.”

Conservatives and media figures continue to claim, without evidence, that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) delivered an incorrect message from Israel to Syria during her meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Pelosi insists that Israel’s message was communicated accurately, and has suggested a good way to prove it:

[Pelosi spokesman Brendan] Daly pointed out that Pelosi was briefed by State Department officials before her meetings with the foreign leaders and that State Department officials also attended her meetings.

So if Pelosi really committed foreign policy flubs of the first order, the State Department is in a position to confirm as much.

The White House certainly received a read-out of what exactly Pelosi and the foreign leaders said in their meetings. Significantly, the White House has not openly accused Pelosi of the foreign-policy missteps the Post had accused her of.

In an e-mail follow-up, Daly wrote: “WH has not said that because in fact the Speaker did not get the message wrong — she included the necessary caveats and did not say or imply that this was a change in Israel’s position.”

Indeed, despite President Bush’s claim that Pelosi’s trip sent “mixed signals,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said during his briefing today, “I don’t think [the trip] necessarily complicates anything that we’re doing.”

The AP reports that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) met with Syrian President Bashar Assad today in Damascus. And according to the article, Issa criticized the administration while on the visit:

Commenting on Bush’s criticism, California Republican Darrell Issa said the president had failed to promote the necessary dialogue to resolve disagreements between the U.S. and Syria.

“That’s an important message to realize: We have tensions, but we have two functioning embassies,” Issa told reporters after separate meetings with Assad and his foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem.

ThinkProgress contacted Issa’s press office for comment. A spokesman signaled Issa may defend the trip by claiming it was Pelosi — not him — who “broke the embargo” of meeting with Syrian officials.

UPDATE: More Issa criticism of the administration’s failed approach:

“President Bush, is the head of state, but he hasn’t encouraged dialogue. That’s an important message to realize: we have tensions, but we have two functioning embassies.”

UPDATE II: Issa is heading a 3-person delegation.

UPDATE III: House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) explains that it’s okay for Republicans to visit Syria, just not Pelosi:

Boehner declined to criticize [fellow Republican Rep. David Hobson] for joining Pelosi, saying her stature gave the visit an imprimatur it didn’t deserve.

“It’s one thing for other members to go,” Boehner said, “but you have to ask yourself, ‘Why is Pelosi going?’ She’s going for one reason and that is to embarrass the president. She is the speaker of the House. She’s giving (the Syrian) government more credit than they deserve. They sponsor terrorism. They have not been at all helpful. I wish she wasn’t there.”

Hobson defended Pelosi, saying she “did not engage in any bashing of Bush in any meeting I was in and she did not in any meeting I was in bash the policies as it relates to Syria.”

UPDATE IV: Greg Sargent notes that Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) also rapped Bush over Syria.

UPDATE V: Asked about the Issa trip, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe says, “I think the administration’s position on members of Congress, Democrat or Republican, is very clear: We do not think it’s productive; we do not think it is useful; we do not think it is helpful.”