Former U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson was in Howell last week stumping for 8th Congressional District Democratic candidate Jim Marcinkowski, a Detroit native and former CIA operative. Marcinkowski, now of Lake Orion, is trying to unseat U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Brighton.
Wilson — husband of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame — discussed meeting Saddam Hussein after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and how he nearly got some jewels he didn't want.
The way Wilson explained it to a reporter friend of ours, Hussein, when meeting someone, would move in close, make direct contact, and then extend a low hand that was, you know, like down there. The intent was to force the other person to look down to see exactly where that hand was, making it seem as if they were bowing their head in deference to the now-deposed despot. Don't look down, and you run the risk of finding out just how much dick the dictator has. Naturally, when the person's gaze, and their head, dipped, Saddam's court photog would snap a pic, chronicling the apparently deferential pose. That Saddy, he's a sly one. But Wilson didn't fall for the ploy, holding his gaze steady while thrusting his hand out, hoping (we're just guessing here) to hit another hand.
Afterward, Wilson said, his pals back in D.C. gave him the business for not taking full advantage of the situation.
"You had this chance to have Saddam Hussein by the balls," Wilson said, recalling the razzing, "and you didn't go for it."
The big question now is, how many of Bush's henchmen in the White House are going to find their nuts in Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's wringer for disclosing Plame's undercover status to that weasel Bob Novak and a few others in the media (and what, exactly, is Judy Miller doing these days?). And all because Wilson had the balls to point out in a New York Times op-ed piece that Bush II, in an attempt to justify the war he was leading us into, decided to falsely declare during a State of the Union address that Niger had supplied Iraq with yellowcake uranium. That would be uranium supposedly used to create weapons of mass destruction we now know didn't exist.
Wilson said it's an "irrefutable fact" Bush should not have inserted those infamous "16 words" into that speech. Another irrefutable fact, Wilson said, (one we figure must be particularly irksome to him) is that no one in the White House has had the grace to stand up and say that outing his secret agent wife was a breach of national security.
Given all that, it's unlikely Wilson's going to be tossing much support in the direction of the GOP come November.
Or, as he said, "It would be extremely difficult for me to vote for a Republican for dog catcher."
News Hits is edited by Curt Guyette. Contact the column at 313-202-8004 or [email protected]
