Posted on 07/01/2004 12:51:59 PM PDT by GLH3IL
World now fears US: ex ambassador 17:36 AEST Thu Jul 1 2004
AP - The last US ambassador to serve in Iraq during Saddam Hussein's regime said that the Bush administration's foreign policy has made America "the most feared threat to global security around the world".
The US-led invasion of Iraq was unnecessary because Saddam's regime posed no immediate threat to American national security, former ambassador Joseph Wilson said during a discussion at the New York Society of Ethical Culture.
Wilson also derided the individuals who leaked to the media the name of his wife - undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame - as "un-American" and "punks".
Investigators want to know who leaked Plame's name to syndicated columnist Robert Novak last July. Disclosure of an undercover officer's identity can be a federal crime.
President George W Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and other top administration officials have been questioned in the investigation.
Wilson has said he believes his wife's identity was disclosed to undermine his credibility.
American political and moral support "evaporated" once the war started, Wilson said, adding that the failure of the coalition to find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction or solid evidence of collaborative links between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network has hurt US credibility worldwide.
"The widespread view is that American leadership is something to be feared, not embraced," Wilson, citing international polls, told a crowd of more than 500 people.
The Iraqi invasion was the brainchild of neo conservatives and members of the religious right within the Bush administration, said Wilson, a career diplomat who worked in both Democratic and Republican administrations.
"This was a war of aggrandisement, this was a war to impose upon the world a vision," he said. "Now that vision has ... met the harsh realities of Iraq."
Wilson denounced the Bush administration for claiming that Iraq, under Saddam, had tried to obtain uranium from the African nation of Niger. Wilson went to Niger for the CIA to investigate and he found the allegation, which Bush mentioned in a State of the Union address, to be highly unlikely.
©AAP 2004
What does Wilson have to say about the recent Niger uranium revelations? Or didn't any of the press bother to confront him on that issue?
Good.
If they don't respect us I'm happy they fear us.
Good. I don't see a downside to this statement.
...."America "the most feared....
GOOD!
If we can't have your friendship, then we'll settle for your respect.
If we can't have your respect, then we'll settle for your fear of us.
If the bastards fear us, maybe they will think twice before attacking us. Oh, that's right the left wants everybody to love us it doesn't matter to them how many Americans are killed as long as we are embraced. Stupid fools
Quick draw, eh.

Bush/Cheney 2004 !!
GOOD!
It's good to be feared..
Presuming this is true, so what? What keeps some people from murdering and stealing? Answer: Fear of the law, fear of jail.
To be truthful, I like the idea of the U.S. being feared. Remember the the old adage: You'll get more with a nice word and a gun than just a nice word.
Didn't our ol' nemesis, Quaddafi, roll over due to.....FEAR of the U.S?
FANTASTIC!
Maybe they'll stop knocking our buildings down & murdering our innocent citizens.
I don't care if they like us -- fearing what we will do to their pissant countries if they engage in terrorist acts against Americans or American interests is sufficient to keep the pissants in place. If they step out and commit terrorism, we need to smoke them and send them to hell.
The man's lost his f'n mind.
So what's the problem, again?
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