The gloves are off!
It still amazes me when I still see that drunk Bill Kristol on tv every week still spewing the same nonsense he was spewing 3 years ago
Drive a stake through the heart of every single neoconservative, if that's what it takes
Zalmay Khalilzad? I'd like to punch him right in the face
Scooter Libby is a despicable coward of a human being
Ambassador Joe Wilson spoke at Florida State University Monday night and pulled no punches, to put it lightly. Wilson pounded the shit out of the Neoconservatives, George W. Bush, Rumsfeld, Khalilzad, Condoleeza Rice, and the rest of the gang and, quite frankly, surprised me with the extent he allowed his anger and frustration to play out to a live audience. Nobody was spared.....not BushCo, not Ken Mehlman, not Ann Coulter, not David Dreier.....he took the entire Bush Cult movement to the woodshed.
Wilson basically took a baseball bat to the face of the entire Neocon GOP movement and named names up and down the list.
The money quotes are comin up after the fold......
I'm sure most in attendance were wanting to hear more about the Plame case, and he would get to that towards the end, but being the 3rd anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq, Wilson focused most of his speech on Iraq, what is happening, what is going wrong, what we did wrong, and how we made such an enormous error at the cost of thousands of lives, a country destroyed, a reputation destroyed, and no end in sight.
Most important to any success in Iraq, according to Wilson, is bringing an international coalition together, not to fight, defend, or keep peace via military forces but for a much different reason, to bring peace talks to a table where all warring parties will feel like they are having a voice that is actually heard rather than signing their own death warrants. He focused a lot of time on this aspect and compared the isolationist approach of BushCo to the time he spent in Baghdad negotiating (and basically strongarming and threatening) with Saddam while Sec. of State Jim Baker along with his Russian counterpart went around the world building a strong international coalition of allies from across the world. He had no kind words for Condoleeza Rice (to put it mildly) and basically said that until this is done there will be no resolution and we will progress nowhere in Iraq. He does not support talk of a pullout because he feels that the talk is "hemorraging political support for our troops at home" which I found a bit lacking in depth but it was one of the few things I disagreed with him on.
Condoleeza Rice needs to stop globe-trotting in her knee high boots and start doing her job and building a coalition
As for the yellowcake in Niger and Rice's claim that nobody in her circle was aware of the reports that it was false or she'd have known about it? Wilson reminded us that there were at least 3 reports in her files, including one from Wilson, stating that the claim could not be backed up at all and was probably false. Of course, she's a lying ass so this is no big shocker to anyone in reality world but how often do we hear Democrats put it quite like this......
Seeing as she was the National Security Advisor, the person whose job it is to keep track of the nuclear threats against the United States, for her not to know about these reports that were sitting in her very own office files says to me that she is either A) incompetent, B) disingenous, or C) and this is the most likely in my opinion....simply a bald faced liar.
Ummmm yuuuuup. Any Dems out there wanna get some lessons on speaking the truth and having cajones? Go talk to Joe Wilson.
photo from FSView
Some more money quotes and baseball bats to the GOP Cranium from the speech.....
On the Neoconservative sleaze machine:
When the Democrats take control of congress, their first order of business needs to be crushing the neoconservativers out of power in every foreign policy arena. Drive a damn stake through the heart of every single one of them, whatever it takes. They have been wrong, fundamentally wrong, on every...single....position they have ever taken. They have not been right about one single thing
The neocons need to be forced back into the dark holes from which they crawled. They are nothing but parasites who serve nobody and nothing but themselves who are using the Republican Party as a serving host
On Neocon Huckster/Warmonger Extraordinaire Bill Kristol:
>It still amazes me when I still see that drunk Bill Kristol on tv every week still spewing the same nonsense he was spewing 3 years ago
On Zalmay Khalilzad, longtime neoconservative, appointed to be U.S. Ambassador to Iraq:
Zalmay Khalilzad? I'd like to punch him right in the face. I've never seen met him and I'd prefer never to see his face but yeah. He has never been right about one thing in 20 years. He is simply another neoconservative that has gotten every single thing wrong.
On Paul Wolfowitz , John Bolton, and destroying the U.N.
Wolfowitz did his best to destroy the Department of Defense so I guess it's time for him to go destroy the World Bank and he's got a willing partner in John Bolton who has taken it upon himself to destroy the United Nations, an organization that, since its' inception , the U.S. has benefitted from as much or more so than it has given.
On the 2nd Amendment in a police state:
I was flying to Florida the other day and seated next to me was Wayne LaPierre, the head of the NRA, and I thought "ya know Wayne, I've finally come around to your way of thinking. I agree, I think every single person in this nation should be armed with a gun................to protect us from these assholes you keep in power." I didn't actually say that....because <smirking> that would have been rude.
On Ken Mehlman, David Dreier, and being a "womanizer"
You know when they first started trying to come up with a way to discredit me, which we now know started in March of 2003, they went through the old standbys. 'He's had 3 wives, he's a womanizer, he's done drugs.' But then they realized they couldnt' use those because I've never actually denied them. I mean I'm the first to admit that, unlike Ken Mehlman and David Dreier, I really like women. Beyond that, going to UC-Santa Barbara in the late 60's, if you weren't smoking pot it was you who was the weird one.
On Ann Coulter
So since they couldn't discredit me as being a womanizer, a druggie, or partisan (since I had handwritten notes from George's dad thanking me for my brave service in saving American lives in Baghdad), they decided to go after the last thing they had, my wife Valerie. Ann Coulter and others came up with the crap that Joe coudlnt' get a job on his own, he needed his wife to find one for him because "he's a wussy man". Well, when I thought about it, I wasn't really all that surprised hearing it from Ann. Afterall, she is a rather manly woman.
I hear Ann going around exalting Joseph McCarthy. I recently read a book by Owen Lattimore called Ordeal by Slander in which he details the way in which McCarthy smeared him and attempted to destroy his life and the battle for his freedom that ensued. I wish Ann would read that book and see who she is using as a hero. Joseph McCarthy was a Nazi sympathizer who tried to destroy the lives of innocent people through a political witchhunt. That is who these people like Ann Coulter support. Remember that. Ann Coulter and her ilk are not only someone you would not want at your dining room table, they're people I wouldn't even allow in my home
On GOP Congress licking Bush's ass
Rep. Ed Markey said the other night that in the last 6 years of the Clinton Administration, the Republican controlled congress issued over 5,000 subpoenas during investigations of the Clinton Administration. In the first 6 years of the Bush administration? Five. Five subpoenas. I think we've got a lot of catching up to do when we take control next year
Wilson didn't go into too much detail on the Plame case other than talking about the motive behind it, how it came about as an attack on his credibility because he couldn't be assailed based on his qualifications. Somebody asked what he thought was going to happen and he said it's just really hard to say because even now they're finally "finding" emails that should have been turned over 2 years ago so who knows.
There is obviously no love lost between Scooter and Wilson though ;-)
I'm glad I'm not a 1st amendment lawyer so I can't really go into what Judith Miller did or did not do right or wrong but I do know this much. Scooter Libby is such a coward that he let this woman sit in jail for months because he was too scared to tell her she could testify. Scooter Libby is a despicable coward of a human being.....just absolutely despicable and vile.
He sounded pretty sincere and full of disgust whenever Scooters name came up with one exception.....
You know, I've lived in somewhere around 15 dictatorships in my life, negotiated and threatened dictators in Africa and the middle east right to their faces. Given that, it's really kind of hard for me to take seriously a trio of clowns named Dick, Karl, and Scooter. I mean, c'mon.
He was pretty funny through the speech but really had a lot of good insights into Iraq in particular that manifested itself through some visible displays of frustration and anger. He is obviously someone with his heart well into serving his country and someone who is pained watching his country that he has served for over two decades get washed down the toilet by a band of thugs in power right now.
His final remarks were really powerful.
George Orwell once said that "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." What I did was not extraordinary. It's the environment in which we act that makes this truth-telling event revolutionary. There's something very wrong with this picture. What is wrong with this picture that we are even having this discussion?
He minced no words by concluding in saying that the administration considers the constitution nothing but toilet paper and we are hanging in the balance in a time when people of all types need to stand up and do their duty to save their country and government. The Bill of Rights is not just a listing of what we can do, he said, but rahter what we are responsible for doing. Freedom of the press is also the responsibility of the press to report the truth and to hold the government in check. Freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances is also the responsibility of every citizen, as he did through his NY Times column, to petitition the government when we see them going over the edge. The only way this nation will survive is by its people, not by its government. Power wants more power and it will not stop until people stand up and come together as a nation to take the country back from those in power. He did not give any details beyond that as to waht he thinks that entails specifically but the charge was put there for the last 10-15 minutes of his speech that our nation is in our hands at this point if it is going to be saved and that is the only way it will make it.
I'm sure I've forgotten half of the good remarks he made and they'll probably come to mind well after I post this but, suffice to say, it was a very fascinating and inspiring speech from somebody who is in a position to make judgement calls about much, if not all, of what he was speaking about.
He was really serious throughout his answers and his speech but he was also very friendly and humorous as well. During the reception, one of the students said "Ambassador, my dad is a big fan of yours and I was wondering if I could call him on my cell and let him say hi to you" and Joe was all smiles and said "sure why not".
So the student called his dad and Joe talked to him on the cell for a good 5-6 minutes lol. I can totally see George W. Bush....scratch that.....ANY Rethug being that accomodating to an open unscreened audience. LOL mkaaaay.
Real outgoing decent guy was the way he came across, being the first time I'd heard him speak or met him and I'm definitely glad I made this one.
Now, all of that stuff is fine and dandy and what not but the real event came outside of the speech itself.
Ambassador Joseph Wilson on Monday March 20, became the first Ambassador to recognize her royal highness, Avila, as the Queen of Infinia. That day shall go down in history as the beginning....of....something lol.
May he be forever remembered for this revolutionary act of nobility with which he has recognized the Queen on her rightful throne. Amen.
[UPDATE - 3/25/06 11:15am] Here is a link to the only news story I have found about the speech thus far.
Tallahassee Democrat - Wilson Knocks Iraq Policy.
The article is pretty slim on actual quotes but there are two that stick out, one from Wilson that I'd forgotten to mention which deserves a mention.
Wilson said if anyone believes Bush and his allies won't improperly use national security data, culled now through eavesdropping on phone calls originating overseas: "I stand before you tonight as somebody who knows from from personal experience that this administration will take national security information and use it for political purposes . . . because they did it to Valerie and to me."
and the obligatory irony meter calibration test presented to you by the Florida GOP:
Jeff Sadosky, Florida Republican Party spokesman, said of Wilson: "True leadership is shown by results, not by blind partisan attacks by someone in an effort to increase book sales, who will say and do anything." Sadosky, though, did not attend the speech.
I think my head just exploded again. WOW.
[UPDATE 2 - 3/25/06 12:10pm]
Another couple of remarks I forgot to mention in the diary....
Wilson on Bob Novak & Jon Stewart:
Novak, by Wilson's account, is nobody to even pay attention to as he's simply a pawn in the game being used by the higher level neoconservatives to spread their sleaze. He basically said something to the effect of "I don't even like spending time talking about him so I like to refer to what Jon Stewart quite accurately said about him " .....
Jon Stewart definitely has the best fake news show in the country. In fact I'd say it's even better than the fake news at Fox News Channel. Valerie doesnt like me using this word that Jon uses because she says that it's a bit vulgar so I'm not going to tell you that Jon Stewart calls Bob Novak a "douchebag"
That was one helluva crowd pleaser there lol.
Wilson on Time Magazine, Scott McClellan, & Karl Rove:
When I gave a speech some time back saying that it would be nice to see Karl Rove frogmarched across the White House lawn, Scott McClellan, when asked about it, stated in no uncertain terms that he had spoken to Karl about it and that Karl was in no way involved in the outing of Valerie.
We now know that, at the time of that statement, Matt Cooper and [two editors at Time] were fully aware that Coopers source was Karl Rove. Knowing this, Time Magazine printed McClellans' statement without question as fact. Time Magazine knowingly lied to the nation and to its readers
Indeed.
It'd be nice to get hear him speak at YearlyKos but I have a feeling he isn't the pro bono speaker type lol.