Equal Time

Simbaud went to see Joe Wilson speak at San Francisco State University:

...We were pleased that Mr. Wilson arrived early in order to mingle with the audience and answer questions before his presentation; we were distressed that he consistently mispronounced the word "nuclear" as "nucular." His speech was nonetheless riveting.

He opened by announcing that it was a good week to be out of Washington -- but then, every week is a good week to be out of Washington. Although he declined to speculate as to whether special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald would return indictments in the Plame case, he did say this: a couple of years ago, his obituary described him (and the past tense is correct: newspapers prepare obituaries of public figures well in advance of their deaths) as "Joseph Wilson, the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein." After the summer of 2003, he became "Joseph Wilson, husband of the first undercover agent to be exposed by her own government."...

We managed to take a few notes, which follow immediately below, although we must warn you that all quotes are approximate:
The bulk of his speech was predictably devoted to the flimsiness of the administration's case for war against Iraq. Mr. Wilson repeatedly emphasized that chemical and biological weapons are not, strictly speaking, "weapons of mass destruction"; only nuclear weapons deserve that label, which is why the White House Iraq Group, eager for war, contrived to invent a nuclear threat where none existed. Despite the notorious "16 words" in Mr. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, Iraq had not attempted to resurrect its long-dormant nuclear weapons program by purchasing uranium yellowcake from Niger, as Mr. Wilson made clear in his CIA report. Two other independent studies commissioned by the administration returned the same finding. The White House, the Pentagon, the intelligence community, and the Senate had all been informed months before the invasion that any such claims were baseless "crap" and "bullshit," but chose to go to war nonetheless...

In the current administration there are, according to Wilson, three schools of thought regarding foreign policy. The Whack-a-Mole school, epitomized by Rumsfeld and Cheney, likes to hit anything and hit everything, and goes looking for new threats when it has nothing left to hit. The Jodhpurs-and-Pith-Helmet school (Perle, Bolton, Wolfowitz on his saner days) argues that America, as the lone remaining superpower, should embrace its imperial destiny and take any actions necessary to maintain global hegemony for generations to come. The God's-Gift-of-Freedom school (Bush, possibly Rice, Wolfowitz on his less sane days) believes, stupidly, that it is part of America's great mission to spread democracy by military force.

Wilson is disappointed that the Iraq constitution passed (if indeed it did) because it represents nothing more than a temporary truce between the Shi'a and the Kurds, excluding Sunni concerns altogether. The constitution as it stands will institutionalize chaos and lead, inevitably, to civil war, but the Bush administration may nonetheless use it as an occasion to declare victory and move on to the next engagement...

Wilson openly mocks the view that a new, Democratized Middle East can arise from chaos we are currently spreading. Columnists like Thomas Friedman make the mistake of assuming that educated, liberal Arabs -- the Westernized types Friedman hangs out with, whom Wilson characterizes as "Doctors, Lawyers, Accountants, and Golfers" -- will naturally rise in influence as the region reconfigures itself. Big mistake, says Wilson: the DLAG class benefits primarily from incremental change, from slow evolution toward modernity. Revolution, on the other hand, favors revolutionaries. Professionals and intellectuals are being driven out of Iraq because they have been targeted for murder by the militias.

Mr. Wilson believes that the outing of Valerie Plame by the White House staff was not just an "incredible act of sleaziness" but a monumental tactical blunder as well, because it shifted the terms of engagement: what had once been a political battle became a legal one instead. The Bush administration is at its best when smearing a political enemy. Its vast marketing and propaganda skills are of limited use when the enemy is not a person but the law itself.

Wilson is especially distressed that, questions of illegality aside, not one Republican has stood up to say that the outing of his wife was wrong. Why, he wonders, would the GOP want to be known as the party of treason?

He further insists that he and his wife are not political activists, but "symbols of the pushback" -- the process by which an out-of-kilter democracy eventually rights itself.

Wilson has no plans to sue Robert Novak, who is "beneath contempt" but, at the end of the day, "only a pawn" of the Bush administration. Asked what he thinks of Novak personally, Wilson refused to reply, deferring to the opinion of his "good friend Jon Stewart": "I've promised my wife to stop using the term 'douche bag.'"...

He has no desire to run for public office ("too many wives, too many drugs" in his past, and a pair of six-year-old twins in his present), but would be happy to serve his country again, if called upon by some future administration. He would find the sort of job that requires Senate confirmation especially attractive, because he would very much like to give Pat Roberts, Orrin Hatch, and Kit Bond the opportunity to call him a liar again. To his face.