Joseph C. Wilson

Joseph Charles Wilson IV (born 1949-11-06) is a retired diplomat of the United States Foreign Service who was posted to African nations and Iraq during the George H. W. Bush administration. During the George W. Bush administration, after his retirement from foreign service, Wilson became known to the general public as a result of his controversial opinion-editorial published in the New York Times on July 6, 2003, four months after the 2003 invasion of Iraq began. In the op-ed, entitled "What I Didn't Find in Africa," Wilson documents his February 2002 trip investigating whether Iraq purchased or attempted to purchase Yellowcake from Niger in the late 1990s. He accused the George W. Bush administration of "exaggerating the Iraqi threat" in order to justify war" (see "the Plame affair").

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• You don't negotiate with fascists, you defeat them in the name of democracy. --Firedoglake Chat, August 24, 2007

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• Neo-conservatives and religious conservatives have hijacked this administration, and I consider myself on a personal mission to destroy both.

• Iraq is a country that remembers its history, dating back millennia. [The Iraqis] will outlive this occupation. They will make our lives difficult there. At the end of it, I think the chances are really very good that the consequences will be far graver to our national security than they were going in.

• In the issue war in Iraq, it was very clear to me that the policies that were being espoused by neoconservatives were totally devoid of substance … but they marketed it wonderfully.

• The spin overwhelms the substance. That’s very clearly what happened.

• We’re not very good… Democrats are not very good at messaging.

• As I’ve said repeatedly, Republicans are very good at describing things in black and white; Democrats are very good at describing the 11 shades of gray.