I wanted to see what Joe Wilson has said about events and details since the time he began his little tirade, and what I found is a deeply silly man who has no idea that his actions were the catalyst for all his wife’s problems. All of these are his own words.

So let us begin with the fact he agrees with the right side of the political spectrum Hussein was a dangerous man who had some WMDs, and had WMD technology

Sure, and the president made that case. I think increasingly it is questionable as to whether or not the dangers posed by Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction programs were either an imminent threat to the national security of the United States, or a grave and gathering danger to the security of the United States. We’re seeing that as we go forward.

But I have never doubted that — and I’ve said this repeatedly — that the weapons of mass destruction issue was the legitimate national security issue that we needed to address in our relationship with the government of Iraq. The way to do that was to enhance the enforcement mechanism of the Resolution 687 of the United Nations Security Council, Resolution 687, which deals with disarmament.

Saddam Hussein was a thug. His regime was a thuggish regime. There was ample reason not to trust anything that they did. There was ample reason — and there was the force of international law — to ensure that disarmament was effective. I never doubted that.
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I didn’t support a invasion, conquest, occupation of Iraq. I didn’t support it as the best way to get at the disarmament objective, and I was always very concerned. I’ve said this repeatedly, that however easy or however difficult it might be for us to get to Baghdad, that was just the beginning — that the occupation and the disengagement from Iraq would be far more difficult and far more costly. …

More here, where he claims Saddam was unstable and dangerous and armed.

WILSON: I always thought that he had chemical weapons because we knew that he’d obviously used them, we knew that he had an appetite for them. There was no reason to suspect that he wasn’t continuing to manufacture chemical weapons as best he could. We knew that he had biological precursors; the question was always whether he had perfected the way of weaponizing the precursors–in other words, turning smallpox into a real weapon. And we were all surprised when, in 1995, we found out after Hussein Kamel’s defection that his nuclear program was as far and vast as it was.

So all of those, I thought, were absolutely legitimate. Saddam Hussein had not complied, to the satisfaction of the international community, with 687, it was important to get his compliance.

He simply was against using force. So what drove him mad enough to take on Bush and his administration? A disagreement about 16 words in a speech!! The world was coming to an end because Bush mentioned UK intelligence on a matter everyone agrees can be seen both ways.

What a knuclehead. And listen to his little Don Quixote moments from his book

knew that my credibility would be challenged the moment I went public, and I made preparations to defend it. I was not going to let the rabid ankle-biters of the right deny me a voice in the debate or impugn my integrity. I had earned the right to be heard, the same right enjoyed by other responsible citizens. I spoke out confident in the belief that our democracy remains strong precisely because we have a long and proud tradition of citizens challenging our government when it lies to the people.

However, for all the insults I knew I would suffer, I never expected the White House itself to do anything like what it did: come after my wife.

He didn’t think the fact his wife was part of the CIA organization that asked him to go to Niger would not be something of interest? How can anyone who supposedly represents the US to foreign governments be this dumb?

But then he goes on to say all this concern was on an unimportant nuance anyway – he dismisses his own rationale!

As it turned out, Rice was actually right — if not for the reason she meant — that the Niger allegation was unimportant, because this war was never really about WMD.
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This enterprise in Iraq was always about a larger neoconservative agenda of projecting force as the means of imposing solutions.

He then goes on one of those liberal conspiracy binges about the war being about other things – it was about a series of risks and the environment Iraq presented that could lead to another 9-11. From some reasons liberals can only allow one reason to do something, there cannot be numerous, overwhelming reaons. They cannot integrate across the pieces to see the whole it seems.

But Joe Wilson is quite a strange bird. He has to use a facade to hide the fact he is a fringe liberal who said he was concerned about the truthfulness of 16 words in a speech by the president, but feels the subject of the 16 words was unimportant. Oh, and he is a liberal – at that is what he seems to be trying to say here

And I will say that, the older I get, the less conservative that I become, in my view. That I do think that government has a distinct role to play to level the playing field. I do believe that the Declaration of Independence creates essentially a meritocracy, and that it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that all of its citizens have an opportunity to advance on merit. Where that puts you in the political spectrum is anybody’s guess, but I am against the abolition of the estate tax.

Why is the media and nation wasting their time on this guy’s delusions of granduer? I leave to ponder another statement by Wilson in his book, one which I agree with him on. I just disagree on who is the target of the investigation is right now:

Ignorance of my wife’s undercover status may exculpate the leakers and pushers from violations under that act, but as a congressional letter of January 26 to the General Accounting Office makes clear, other laws may have been broken, including statutes relating to the handling of classified material. Even the Patriot Act may have been violated, if Sam Dash’s interpretation of that law is correct.