Amb. Wilson at Florida State University

Apparently, Ambassador Joseph Wilson gave a speech at Florida State University last Monday night and pulled no punches. tlh lib wrote up the whole thing (with photos) at Daily Kos.

This is how the press covered it.

Below the fold, see just how pissed off Joe Wilson is…
On Condi:

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.

On the neocons:

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 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 Ambassador to Iraq, and best buddy of Joe Biden, Zalmay Khalilzid:

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 and John Bolton:

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 National Rifle Association:

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 gay Republicans, drugs, and womanizing:

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.

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.

On Ann Coulter:

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 Congressional oversight and our rights:

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

On Scooter Libby and Judith Miller:

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.

On Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Scooter Libby:

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.

Reflecting on his experiences with this administration:

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?

I think Wilson might be going a little far with his rhetoric here (in a few cases). But I certainly share his frustration and his anger and his concern for our nation.

Author: BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.