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Oct. 20, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:12
October 20, 2005, Thursday, Hour #2
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So, HR, every we've all got the television sets on here, and we're tracking uh hurricane and so forth since it uh affects us next week.
And Jeb Bush is on the screen, and HR says, Do you know Jeb?
And I said, Yeah, I I know Jeb pretty well.
He says, Is he a nice guy?
He says a very nice guy.
He says, you know, the people of Florida just have to feel confident watching Jeb on television talk about the uh the arrangements and the uh plans that Florida's making to deal with the approaching hurricane, Wilma.
And I said, Yeah, and you know something, get the folks, this is true.
The the mayor of West Palm Beach, which I'm not a resident of West Palm Beach.
I do have to drive through it now and then in order to get to where I do live, but I'm not I'm not a I'm not a resident there.
The mayor of West Palm Beach is uh uh well known.
I mean, she was she used to be in the Florida legislature name is Lois Frankel big, big lib, big, big lib.
And even she said yesterday to the residents of West Palm She said, Well, look, I've already chartered the buses necessary to get people out of here if it comes to that.
We are not New Orleans here.
Whoa, ho, ho, ho.
Where is school bus Negan on that?
Is he still having a beignet at the Cafe Dumont?
Uh note that she did not say we are not FEMA.
We're not Michael Brown down here.
We are not New Orleans, she said.
Um, FEMA always does manage to work in Florida.
It always has.
Florida's had this is going to be the sixth hurricane in two years if when it gets here, and and uh well, uh you know something people in Florida are upset.
I have to tell you something.
The people north of here, up in Port St. Lucy and Vero Beach, but they still haven't gotten any aid.
They they haven't been able to finish the rebuilding up there.
Some of the money promised them from FEMA and this sort of has not shown up.
And now you've got the people in New Orleans demanding to go uh in Louisiana be uh be put first in line.
And then this this uh little uh baby fat Mary Landrew, she's uh she's she's losing it again.
She's out there saying, Where are our schools and where's our hospitals?
And so we're losing our schools and hospitals, the hospitals and schools being built in Iraq.
She claims that the rebuilding of Iraq is a higher priority than the rebuilding of her uh her state, Louisiana and the city of New Orleans.
Uh and it's just it's it's the whining and the moaning.
Sometimes, you know, it just it it I have to tune out.
I can't I can't handle whining and moaning.
I can't I can't I just can't stand being around little babies.
And it uh it seems like more and more liberals just become bigger, bigger babies, more miserable and more unhappy as the as the days unfold.
Anyway, greetings and welcome back.
Here we are, Rushland bought the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
800-282-2882 is the number if you'd like to be on the program.
Snerdley looked it up.
He founded April 5th, 1992.
This is during the campaign.
Bill Clinton said, and I will appoint judges to the Supreme Court who believe in the constitutional right to privacy, including the right to choose.
Uh so there Clinton did establish his litmus test.
So it's okay for the lib sip.
We're gonna get a pro-choice nominee.
We're gonna have all of our judges gonna be pro-choice, they're gonna be pro-Roe v.
Wade.
But somehow Republicans can't say this.
Republican nominees can't say it, Republican presidents can't say it.
Oh, well, I've never talked to my nominee about it.
I don't have any litmus tests, so no, no, no.
I I wouldn't dare presume our nominee is gonna rule on such uh such an issue.
Well, here we have to hide what we're doing and have to, you know, uh behave in a totally different way than the left gets to behave on this and not just this, but uh but other um other crucial issues.
So it is a good point.
Uh so uh uh and what I'm referring to here is is the Novak column today in in which it is said that these uh hearings for Harry and Myers could uh feature unspeakable ugliness, and what he's referring to is a conference call uh made to 13, 12 or 13 religious leaders in America by two friends of Harriet Myers who assured these religious leaders in the conference call that uh she will vote to overturn Roe vs.
Wade when it comes before her if she is if she's confirmed.
Now, fine and then I have no problem with that, but the White House has been out saying just the opposite.
They don't even know what she thinks about it.
And so it it it gives the appearance they've lost control of the process or not telling the truth, and which means the Democrats now are free if they want to to subpoena these two guys.
One of them is the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, Nathan Heck.
So if they get subpoenaed, come for the committee.
What did you say to these religious these Christians?
What did you say to these Christians when you were talking to them about uh Harriet Myers?
Well, I don't know.
Then they'll subpoena John Fund.
Well, John Funn did the story, he's got the notes.
This could it could uh we could quickly see this thing spiral out of control, but it might be it might be well worth it.
You know, put this out on the table.
Why hide this anymore?
It's not something that needs to be hidden.
Why do you have to be embarrassed about being pro-life?
Why do you have to be embarrassed about not wanting to kill babies in a womb?
Why should that be an embarrassment?
Why should that be something you have to hide?
Why should that be something you have to tiptoe around?
Well, Rush, what about the polls?
But the polls.
You know, you were going to put the polls over a matter of core principle such as life?
You know, let uh let the chips fall, but but it's not something you have to hide.
All right, let me get this story out of the way, because I think this is interesting.
The pr th this this is the timing of this is not coincidental.
It is meant to be a pylon with the CIA leak investigation.
Let me treat you to the Washington Post version of the story.
It's by Dana Milbank.
As Colin Powell's right hand man at the State Department, Larry Wilkerson seethed quietly during President Bush's first term.
Yesterday, Colonel Wilkerson made up for lost time.
He said that the vice president and the Secretary of Defense created a Cheney Rumsfeld Cabal that hijacked U.S. foreign policy.
He said a former defense undersecretary Douglas Fife, seldom in my life have I met a dumber man.
Addressing scholars and journalists and others at the New America Foundation.
Wilkerson accused Bush of cowboyism, said he had viewed Condoleza Rice as extremely weak.
Of American diplomacy, he fretted, I'm not sure the State Department even exists anymore.
And there you have the bug in this guy's rug.
There you have the little pimple on his rear end that's upsetting him so much.
There you have the burr in his sack, ladies and gentlemen.
There you have the insect that's flown up his nose that's got him all a Twitter and out of sorts.
I'm not sure the State Department even exists anymore.
And how about Karen Hughes' efforts to boost the country's image abroad?
Well, it's hard to sell manure, Wilkerson said, quoting an Egyptian friend.
So Karen Hughes is man.
You get this, so Cheney stinks, Rumsfeld stinks, Douglas Fife stinks, Condoleezza Rice's incompetent and weak, and Karen Hughes is manure.
Who is this man?
Who is this man, Larry Wilkerson?
Larry Wilkerson was the chief of staff at the State Department until early this year.
Now it is said that he was the personal chief of staff to Colin Powell, but if he was chief of staff of the State Department until earlier this year, he stayed on after Colin Powell left.
Right.
Here's what he also, and by the way, this New America Foundation.
You know, there's a there's a uh that's a confusing name because there's the young America Foundation, the young America's something or other.
And I said, Who is this bunch?
This this rings a bell.
So I went looking last night while watching the Cardinals blow it to the Astros.
Couldn't hit a lick.
Same thing in the World Series.
What they got to the World Series, the most potent offense in the major leagues, petered out.
Same thing as the new Yank Yorkies.
Anyway, so I'm watching that, and I go look this thing up.
Folks, the new America Foundation is a pack of liberals.
It is a new think tank.
It is a pack of they got a couple token conservatives there as associate fellows, but for the most part, it is a just a huge lib think tank.
It's made up of lib financiers, lib big time bankers, lib scholars.
Lib business people.
And so this guy goes there to make this speech to basically tar and feather this administration.
And it's also said of Larry Wilkerson, he actually said what Colin Powell was always thinking what was too discreet to say.
Here's some other things Larry Wilkerson said.
The man who was chief of staff at the State Department until earlier this year continued if you're unilaterally declaring Kyoto dead, if you're declaring the Geneva Convention's not operative, if you're doing a host of things that the world doesn't agree with you on, and you're doing it blatantly and in their face without grace, then you've got to pay the consequences.
Well, if I didn't know better, I would think I was listening to a rerun of the John Carey for President campaign.
Wilkerson adds a new dimension to the criticism.
A 31-year military veteran and former director of the Marine Corps War College, he worked for Colin Powell in the public and private sectors.
For much of the past sixteen years, he was often described by colleagues as the man who would say what Powell was thinking but was too discreet to say.
Wilkerson's beef with the administration was for the most part not ideological.
He argues that U.S. forces must remain in Iraq, and he describes George H.W. Bush as one of the finest presidents we've ever had.
He's part military man and part academic.
He said hell a lot, but also used words such as desultory and titular.
Peering from large wire-rimmed glasses armed with a flag lapel pin, he spoke with barely restrained anger.
He had given critical quotes about the administration before, but yesterday's New America Foundation speech was his coming out as an administration critic.
Okay, so there are two really telling things here about Mr. Wilkerson's mindset, and I must admit I had not heard of him until I saw the story.
So I will also admit I don't know that much about him.
But if he's gonna sit there and say, I'm not sure the State Department even exists anymore.
Can I I want to take you back to this program?
I don't have the exact date, but when Condoleez-Rice was named a Secretary of State, I said to you people, what's happening here is the same thing that Bush sent Porter Goss over to the CIA to do and clean the place out.
And we have talked countless times on this program about how liberal infested the State Department is.
A bunch of career libs, many of them held over from the Clinton administration, and they have a different world view.
They have a liberal worldview.
And I know that many of you uh uh who are maybe new to all this, or relatively new to it, with the State Department.
How can the State Department have people in it against U.S. policy?
Well, how can we have liberals?
Same question.
Ha ha you you think that every America's patriotic, particularly when we go to war?
No, folks.
There's some people that don't think that we deserve to win wars, and most of them are in the State Department, or a lot of them are.
And the whole point of sending Rice over there was to clean the place out.
The whole point of sending Karen Hughes to the Middle East was to get rid of the influence in the State Department that regularly sells this country out and undercuts it.
Now, for this, the president deserves praise.
He deserves plaudits.
The best quote that Mr. Wilkerson said is I'm not sure the State Department even exists anymore.
What he means is it doesn't exist as he remembers it.
That's good.
That is flat out good, trust me.
Go ask any of the Reagan administration people about the State Department.
Go ask them, folks.
Go ask them how tough it was.
Conservative administrations have two enemies, whoever they are around the world and the people in the State Department, particularly the career people.
And the same thing existed at the CIA.
The CIA leak business here.
I don't know what's going on with it, but I can tell you right now that many of the leaks that came out prior to the war with the Rock came from the CIA.
Let's look at how how incompetent the CIA was in stopping anything from happening 9-11 before it.
The CIA didn't have any intelligence it was worthwhile.
Heads should have rolled over there a long time ago.
The CIA even authorized an ex-agent, which they never allow to go out and write a book trashing the Bush administration.
Because there are some people over there trying to hold on to their own power and trying to sabotage the Bush administration because he's trying to clean the place up.
It's become a career resting place for a whole lot of people to pick up a paycheck and have some power and have some fun.
State department, same thing.
They're ideologues and they have an agenda, but at the same time it's job security.
Here comes Bush wanting to clean it all out.
There's no guessing here why he is a huge enemy to the American left, the worldwide left, and the people that populate the State Department and the CIA who are also left, and this speech is a greatest indication yet that Bush is having success in cleaning excess pool up.
This little reference here.
If you're unilaterally declaring Kyoto dead, what do you mean unilaterally?
We have one vote just like every other nation, and we're not the only nation who didn't vote for it.
Now we're the world leader.
Okay, we don't vote for it, so another lot of other nations don't come along.
We didn't unilaterally kill Kyoto.
It's bad deal.
Tony Blair has pulled out of it.
He was an original supporter.
Even he recognizes what a penalty it makes and causes to uh industrialized uh advanced nations.
It was silly, it's anti-American.
This whole Kyoto is it's worthless anyway.
It's based on a bunch of junk science.
The smartest thing in the world was backing out from now.
You've got a guy here, State Department, totally devoted making agreements with all the people around the world, never solving problems.
That's what keeps your job security.
You just open dialogue, keep dialogue open, but you never solve anything.
You go through the motions and make it look like you're working on a solution, but you never get there.
Because if you get there, then what do you have left to do?
So this speech by Mr. Wilkerson, the presses, I mean the Financial Times heralding this speech, the Washington Post heralding this speech.
Hey, look at Bush is in such trouble.
Now even the loyal chief of staff, the Colin Powell can't hold it any longer.
He's telling everybody how really rotten this administration is, how incompetent they are.
Folks, I'm telling you right now.
This is happening because Bush is succeeding in cleaning up these two places, the CIA and the State Department.
They have been long overdue for this.
And what this speech tells me is just how powerfully successful Bush has been.
The whole Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame thing tells me just how successful Bush has been, because Bush is the epitome of the top of the big leagues, and he's taken on some people that have thought they owned what they owned for the rest of their lives, and he's pulling the rug out from under them, and they are not going to let him get away with it if they can help it.
in just a moment.
Let's go back to the good old days of Colonel Larry Wilkerson, shall we?
The chief of staff to uh Secretary Colin Powell, uh uh Secretary of State Powell, go back to the good old days.
Larry Wilkerson misses.
Before Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld hijacked foreign policy.
Let's go back to those good old days, shall we?
The UN was effective.
Nations in the world got along with one another, loved each other, shared resources.
The UN was scandal-free.
Why, there was no oil for food scandal, was there?
There was no genocide in Rwanda.
The United Nations was maintaining prosperity and opportunity in the continent of Africa, wasn't it?
And France was right like they have always been next to us, right by our side in every conflict.
We could count on the French and we could count on the Germans.
Germany, Belgium, France, all could be counted on in the good old days before George W. Bush and Jick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Karen Hughes and Condoleezza Rice.
Iran, by the way, Iran was not developing nuclear weapons, and they were not a sponsor of terrorism.
No, the State Department had all this under control, ladies and gentlemen.
Iran was a peace-loving nation, simply wanting to be left alone.
Hezbollah didn't exist.
The Islamic Jihad didn't exist.
There was no Osama bin Laden, there was no Al-Qaeda.
There were no airplane hijackings.
No, folks, the world, do you realize what a lovely pristine place the world was prior to Bush and Cheney and Rice and Karen Hughes and Rumsfeld, and let's throw Mary Madeline in there.
They think she's going to be indicted now.
Oh, I haven't gotten there yet.
Syria, Basher Assad, they were peacnicks.
Do you realize they were marching around the world trying to forge peace?
They hated the conflict in Israel between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
So did the Egyptians, the Egyptians, and the Syrians and the Jordanians were constantly trying to make peace.
Nobody fired one weapon at anybody, no nation warred with any nation.
And the North Koreans, why they were just good old boys.
And their people were overfed.
They didn't have to eat dogs and cats In North Korea back when Larry Wilkerson ran and worked at the State Department.
No, the North Korea, why they weren't even interested in nuclear weapons.
And the Chinese, they weren't propelling missiles into outer space testing nuclear warheads.
Which the Clinton administration gave them.
Ah, yes, my friends, the State Department in the good old days, before Bush and Cheney and Rice and Rumsfeld came along and destroyed world peace.
Isn't it just a shame?
Back in just a moment.
Your guiding light through times of trouble, confusion, murkiness, tumult, chaos displayed, torture, humiliation, and even the good times of the State Department crack up.
Here's Chris in Palm Bay, Florida.
Hello, Chris, you're next on the program.
Great to have you with us.
Thank you, Rush.
Full moon ditto.
Thank you, sir.
Yes, sir.
Um, you know, uh, the one of the main reasons why I did vote for for the administration, despite the many letdowns, was because of the opposition to Kyoto and to the international criminal court.
Yes.
The debate is over now, Rush, because Wilkerson, battle and alright and all of them are dead wrong.
If you saw the story coming out of Spain yesterday, a judge there has issued an arrest warrant for American soldiers for the death of a Spanish journalist in Baghdad the day before the statue of Saddam Hussein fell in Baghdad.
Yes.
Arresting our own soldiers.
So the debate is over, Rush.
The liberals want to put and the State Department want to put the interests of the world ahead of the interest of our military of the United States and our servicemen and women.
And that proves it.
I know.
That that's that's a great illustration, and it's exactly right.
The State Department's populated with people who sympathize with America's critics.
They're populated with liberals who sympathize with Americans' critics.
Oh, you don't like us?
Why?
Uh we we well, maybe we need to convene a seminar to find out why Al Qaeda hates us so much.
We we need to do this.
Now, Chris in Palm Bay, Florida is exactly right.
Judge in Spain wants to put uh two or three American soldiers on trial, three soldiers on trial for uh killing a Spanish journalist.
Let me see what this is really all about.
Obviously, I have a liberal judge over there.
What this is really all about is making sure Al Qaeda doesn't hit them again.
Spain is gone.
Spain is lost.
The moment Spain capitulated to that attack on their train station by throwing out their their government re-electing this liberal guy Zapata, that was it.
And Al Qaeda and these and the Spanish and they they think, well, you know, uh I guess uh we're safe now.
Al Qaeda knows that uh we we got out of Iraq and we're gonna stay out of Iraq.
Well, yeah, Al-Qaeda's threatened to hit him again, and now this is probably done to buy more insurance from Al-Qaeda.
And if the if if if Larry Wilkerson had his way, the State Department will be sympathizing with this judge and with Spain, and we'd be trying to accommodate their request to put our soldiers on trial.
And if there was an international criminal court, we wouldn't have anything to say about it anyway.
These guys would go to the International Criminal Court, and U.S. military operatives, military soldiers, would be able to be charged as criminals, folks, had Bush gone along with the International Criminal Court, which I'm sure Larry Wilkerson was for, which I'm sure the State Department was for, just as uh they were mistakenly uh for Kyoto and uh and so forth.
So I you know, these are these are uh there's no question these are serious times.
So much revolves around the war on terrorists, so much revolves our future national security is at stake here.
Our standing is the lone superpower is at stake here, and that's why Bush had to clean out the State Department, or at least make an effort to do it.
Because we were never going to be able to accomplish our objectives in this battle or hardly any other.
I mean, did the State Department get us anywhere near solving the Cold War?
Did they?
You think the State Department and their policy of engagement and uh mutual assured destruction was Pentagon philosophy, but whatever, the two work together in that sense.
Do you think that would have solved?
No, because the State Department's not about victory.
I guess the easiest way to explain this is the State Department's not about winning anything.
The State Department's about making sure nobody likes dislikes this and getting along and making sure our critics are appeased.
Because they just have a cock-eyed world view.
And their cock-eyed worldview is formed on the basis that most world problems are because we cause them.
Our size, our superpower status, uh our prosperity ends up with more of the world's resources being used and wasted in the United States, and it's just not fair.
Poverty around the world, our fault.
Third world, our fault.
If there were a United States, there wouldn't be a third world because all the resources would be spread equally.
This is a kind of thinking that's long been in the State Department dominating it.
Uh, Sam in Chicago, you're next.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
How are you doing, Rush?
Good.
Listen, I hear, I'm hearing from you right now a defense of the possible indictees in the Valerie Play incident.
And I'm also hearing across the board from conservatives about how bad it is, what that's what's happening to Mr. DeLay.
And I just see conservatives, especially yourself, Rush, as having a double standard of listening to you.
And for years and years I've listened to you how bad Bill Clinton was for lying under oath about a sexual incident.
And right now, you are talking what you're doing is you're stepping up to the plate and you're starting to prepare your your defensive arguments to a situation where an undercover or at least a covert CIH.
All right, hold Sam, Sam, hold hold hold on just a second now.
She was not covert.
Well, Rush.
She was not covert, Sam.
It's not arguable.
It's not my opinion.
It's not the way you feel it's important.
She was not a covert agent.
If there's a big lying skunk in this equation, it is her husband, Joseph Wilson.
Joseph Wilson has told so many whoppers, it is I hope he's been subpoenaed.
I hope he's testified to this grand jury.
I hope she has been.
We haven't heard anything about that.
But I don't know what you're hearing.
Who what liars am I defending here?
Rush, what you're talking about right now is the means, the means justify the anything to in any way destroy the positions of her husband were acceptable.
And I think, and I don't know, I think that is exactly what was going on here.
And I don't think that that's the way a real conservative, a law and order person, should be talking about it.
I don't think you know anything about a real conservative if you think that a real conservative would be doing what you say.
If a re if if if if a real conservative would be doing what you say, then you'd be a conservative.
You wouldn't be calling yourself a liberal.
So look at your technique.
Try to define conservatism for me by saying I'm not it.
You set up standards that don't define conservatism and say a real conservative would do this.
You think this is all about trying to destroy Joe Wilson?
Let me tell you what this is all about, Sam.
This is about Joe Wilson trying to take down a presidency.
This is about your hero, Joe Wilson trying to destroy the Bush presidency, and that's why you like him, and that's why you think he's good.
Joe Wilson is not worth all of this that people are putting on the line for him.
Joe Wilson has engaged in a plan here with his wife to be sent over to Niger to undermine this war on terror and the war on Iraq.
It's ironic that Joe Wilson comes back after his visit to Niger, reports to the CIA, not written, but verbally, never submitted a written report.
Cheney never saw a written report.
There wasn't a written report.
He came back and gave his verbal report, and it pretty much confirmed what some in the CIA thought anyway, that there was something going on with Niger and Iraq.
Now you want to you want to pass this off as this administration trying to destroy Joe Wilson.
Because that's what you people have been led to believe, but you are so misinformed on this, you don't even know what this is about.
You don't even know what this grand jury has come up with.
You don't know that anybody has lied, you don't know that anybody's going to be charged with perjury, but you're living under the illusion that it's all going to map out the way you want it to, and you don't know this, and you're taking a flyer on this.
If I were you, I'd pull back out.
Wait till you know something before you start calling and launching into these allegations of what I'm doing.
I'm not being inconsistent at all.
I have said constantly, I don't know who did what in this case.
I don't think half the American people outside the Beltway care about this case.
And the only way they're going to care about this case is if there are indictments.
If there are no indictments in this case, I'll tell you who's going to have hell to pay, and that's the mainstream press, because the mainstream press will once again, if there are no indictments, do the same thing that they did in Katrina in the aftermath, report a bunch of BS and bull hockey.
Now just sit back out there, Sam, and sit tight, and rather than try to be critical of me and try to destroy my credibility or whatever with this call for the program.
If you're gonna call back, get your facts straight on this.
Find out who Joe Wilson is.
Find out that Valerie Plame was not covert.
Find out this was not about trying to destroy her career.
It was not about trying to destroy his career, because frankly, he doesn't have a career.
What is Joe Wilson's career?
Can somebody tell me?
Where's a career diplomat?
Was he a diplomat now?
What was it what what Joe Wilson's done a good enough job of damaging himself.
Uh the the uh you the Bush administration doesn't need to do that.
The big mistake the Bush administration made in all this, if you want to know the big mistake they made, Sam, the big mistake that they made is even wasting time talking to the New York Times and the Washington Post.
They don't need to talk to the Washington Post and the New York Times to get their story out.
All they have to do is go to the American people.
All Bush has to do is call a press conference, national press conference, national speech of the Oval Office.
Get the get the news straight to the American people.
It's a total waste of time trying to bring the New York Times, the Washington Post in to the president's side.
They're not interested in helping the president.
It's a waste of time trying to spin them.
It's a waste of time thinking that you've got to get the New York Times and Washington Post on board before you can get anything done in this country.
As a conservative, it frosts me that there are still Republicans that think that they can't get anything done on their agenda or policy-wise unless they get the New York Times or Washington Post on board.
Both those papers are becoming less and less and less influential nationwide.
Yeah, they may still matter inside the beltway, and they may still batter with members of Congress.
But it's not the way we need to get things done.
We do it by going to the American people, getting the American people behind us.
That's the mistake they made here.
Quick time out, we'll be back in just a moment.
Sam in Chicago, I know you're still out there save you even some more detail on this.
Bill Clinton was bad.
Nobody being two-faced or hypocritical about this.
He did lie under oath.
He was held in contempt of court.
He surrendered his law license for five years, Sam.
He resigned from the U.S. Supreme Court bar.
Now, for all your wishful thinking, Carl Rove and Scooter Libby have been attacked in the media with leak after leak and speculation after speculation, and they haven't yet been charged with anything, Sam.
And even if they are charged, as in the Tom DeLay case, I'll draw my own conclusions about what those charges say.
I'm not going to let you write my script for me.
I'm not going to let you guys call here and set the table for me.
It'd be easy to do what the mainstream press is doing.
Throw the Constitution to the wind, assert guilt, essentially.
Assume resignations, assume it's Watergate, assume that everybody's going to be taken to the firing squad.
As for Joe Wilson.
Joe Wilson sought to interpose himself into the debate over Iraq.
He and his wife conspired to get him sent to Niger.
It was by the vice president.
He was not sent by the Bush administration.
And they were taking no effort to get even with him because he double crossed them.
He chose to write an op-ed in the New York Times in which he lied repeatedly.
It has been demonstrated over and over.
He's a partisan hack.
He worked behind the scenes with John Kerry.
He has worked behind the scenes with Chuck Schumer.
He and Chuck Schumer go way back and are part of this alliance that's aimed at embarrassing Bush and keeping him on the defensive.
The purpose for Joe Wilson's trip to Niger was to destroy the Bush presidency by undercutting the war effort.
That's why Joe Wilson wanted to go to Niger, and that's why his wife wanted to send him to Niger.
That's what this is all about.
And we're supposed to now pretend that this guy has some kind of victim status now, put upon by a vicious White House.
This guy deserves to be disdained.
He's a despicable character.
And we're going to be watching Sam very carefully here to see what Fitzgerald does, the special prosecutor here.
If he conducts himself in a way that we find over the top, we'll say so.
You can count on it.
Now, you liberals, you viciously attacked Ken Starr.
You went out there and tried to portray him as a sexual pervert.
A voyeur.
You did everything you could to destroy Ken Starr's reputation and his life.
And now you demand that we accept whatever comes down the pike, that we must be consistent.
Well, it depends on what it is.
And if it stinks, I will say so.
Pure and simple.
More on Larry Wilkerson.
This is a uh CNN story.
Armitage Bolton often clashed, aid says.
Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage often clashed with President Bush's nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the U.N., according to a close aide, former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Armitage also restricted Bolton's public speaking unless his comments were personally cleared by him, said Larry Wilkerson.
In testimony to the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Wilkerson, who served as Powell's chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, was one of more than 30 witnesses interviewed by staff members of the committee, which is expected to vote on Bolton's nomination on Thursday.
I don't know what the date of this story is, but it's it's uh uh obviously goes back to the days where Bolton uh was had it before he had been recess appointed.
Transcripts of Wilkerson's testimony and that of others interviewed by committee staff members last week were provided by a Democrat on the panel who opposes Bolton's nomination, a CNN story, by the way.
Wilkerson, a close friend and longtime aide to Powell, said he was speaking in his own capacity and not as a proxy for his former boss or Armitage.
He said he was surprised by comments that Armitage made last week, calling Bolton eminently qualified for the job, saying he supported Bush's choice.
Wilkerson said that Bolton, who is under Secretary of State for Arms Control, was a source of tension at the department, overstepped his bounds on several occasions.
Wilkerson, in his testimony transcript, recalled Bolton's moves and gyrations to prevent Mohammed Alberadai from securing a third term as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Wilkerson said Bolton went out of his way to badmouth Elberadai, makes me like him even more, to make sure that everybody knew that the maximum power of the United States would be brought to bear against them if he were brought back in.
Wilkerson also cited several problems with speeches and testimony given by Bolton that were not properly vetted, eventually prompting Armitage to restrict Bolton's speeches and testimony unless Armitage personally cleared the comments in particular.
Wilkerson cited a 2003 speech, July, on the eve of six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear program.
In the speech, Wilkerson said Bolton offered about 40 negative references to North Korean leader, the pit the potbellied Kim Jong-il.
Wilkerson said the speech set off much consternation throughout the U.S. government.
No, it didn't, probably through the State Department.
So what do we have here?
We have Wilkerson who's dumped on Rumsfeld and Rice and Bush and Cheney for hijacking foreign policy.
Now he does it like John Bolton.
He's a big fan of the United Nations, a huge fan of Mohammed Alberadai, and he got really ticked off that Bolton nailed Kim Jong il and dared tell the truth about it.
I'm telling you that this guy Wilkerson and others like him in the State Department are privately fuming over what Bush has done to dismantle the structure of the State Department, particularly now that Condoleezza Rice is over there, folks.
And all of these uh this story today from that new America Foundation speech that Wilkerson gave, going back here and looking at his thoughts on John Bolton.
Uh, this is nothing more than testimony to the fact that Bush has succeeded in shaking the rugs over there and getting some of the some of the the longtime problems out and start to restructuring.
It's a great indication of success that's underway at the State Department, and I uh I assume the same thing's happening at the CIA with Porter Goss because they're they're complaining as loudly about he hadn't gotten anything done.
Porter Gross, he's rotten to the core.
There must be a lot of success happening there too.
Be right back.
One more point about Larry Wilkerson.
How in the world can Bush and Cheney hijack foreign policy?
They are responsible for it.
That should be an insight into the thinking of the State Department.
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