Excellent Quotations from Joe Wilson Chat

this is from a chat this morning with joe wilson on john kerry's website--they should post the full transcript some time soon.
wilson showed once again why he is a man to be reckoned with.
i'm ABBOL (anyone but bush or lieberman), but joe's backing of kerry certainly makes kerry a more attractive candidate.

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on rove and cheney:
"i knew saddam hussein, so i'm not afraid of rove or cheney"

on the war:
"this was a stupid war"

on the bush talking points:
"we cannot allow ourselves to be defeated by a message that is no more sophisticated than fear fear fear"

on the adminstration:
"we were lied to by the administration every step of the way...arrogance is the right way of describing these guys"

on saddam hussein:
"saddam hussein is a sociopathwho tried to be very intimidating in my last meeting with him...i had not slept for four days and gave as good as i got even if i am not a sociopath myself"

in response to my question about bush's actions/words regarding the leak investigation:
"i am frankely appalled at the nonchalance exhibited by the president on this matter...at the end of the day, the person who may well have violated the national security of my country is still in place and may do it again. i expect more from my leaders."

again on the war:
"this was a war of choice....which war did we send jessica lynch to fight? was it ours? ahmed chalabi's? or somebody else's?"

on PNAC:
"everybody should read it since it is a blueprint for the most dangerous policy this country has pursued at least in my lifetime"

on bush finding his own ass with two hands and a flashlight:
"bush hasn't been able to find osama...hasn't been able to find saddam hussein...hasn't even been able to find the leaker...how can we be confident about anything these guys say and do?"

on bush and the truth:
"there is very little that bush says these days that bears any relation to the truth"

on karl rove and the frogmarch:
"i think that karl rove acted despicably in this matter even if his pushing of the story was not technically illegal. the quote in a recent newsweek article was accurate. he told a journalist friend of mine that my wife is 'fair game.' even if not in handcuffs, he should be frog marched out of the white house."

not holding back at all.

running for president.

hmmmmmm.

are wholly mistaken. They try to use Wil Marshall (an advisor to the campaign) as a 96 signer on a PNAC letter, to smear Kerry's record. Wilson is acting as a Kerry campaign team member, aligning with Kerry's policies. Kerry is NO imperialist as many here try to paint him.

We've had a long, long line of imperialist presidents. The case could be made that Kennedy was an imperialist, for example. Ike was an imperialist. LBJ was an imperialist. Nixon was an imperialist. It's going to take a good long time for the US to learn not be imperialist.

The problem is, Bush/Cheney are INCOMPETENT imperialists. There's nothing more harmful to a country than that. Like the Romanov family, or the last French King, or Nero, these guys are strip mining the good will, resources and friendly alliances this country has built up since WWII, and is trading them for the foreign policy equivalent of a Nigerian 419 letter written by Ahmed Chalabi!

My reaction was unprintable.

THAT is the kind of man we need on our side, and I thanks the Gods that we have him!

John Dean makes the point that Rove isn't off the hook, even if he didn't make the call to Novak. According to Dean, the laws on conspiracy are such that the "Plame is fair game" statement he did apparently make includes him in a criminal conspiracy:

A Further Look At The Criminal ChargesThat May Arise From the Plame Scandal, In Which a CIA Agent's Cover Was Blown

I wish he would run for some sort of office. We need him in politics.

After Bush goes down in 2004, the rest of the world will welcome Wilson with open arms for his integrity and steadfastness. He'll be considered an "honest broker" to the entire world, which is no small thing.