| Since the Italian MSM is even less reputable than their American counterparts, we'd better wait for the transcripts. |
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, on the eve of a trip to Washington, said he repeatedly tried to persuade US President George W Bush against invading Iraq.How soon can we read the transcripts? Those should be rich.
The Italian leader voiced his unease with the military operation to topple Saddam Hussein during a television interview to be broadcast on Monday - the same day he meets Bush.
When was he the bigger idiot? When he objected but sent troops or now when he claims he was stupid before?
Berlusconi is one of Washington's strongest allies but he did not send troops to join the invasion, preferring to despatch troops only after the fall of Baghdad. "I tried many times to convince the American president not to go to war
Giuseppi, do you think he'd say something that dumb?
Berlusconi pulled about 300 soldiers from Iraq earlier this year as part of a phased withdrawal, leaving about 2,900 troops there. He is trailing in opinion polls ahead of April elections to centre-left rival, Romano Prodi, who promises to withdraw all Italian forces from Iraq if he is voted into office. Berlusconi's answers in the interview were unclear since La7 only provided small excerpts. The Italian leader has been defending himself against accusations in Italy that the country's intelligence agency, possibly after government pressure, passed-off fake documents to Washington used to bolster claims of Iraq's nuclear ambitions.
The devil made me do it.
The documents purported that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium from Niger.
Joe Wilson told me it would shorten the war.
His office has sent out two statements in the past week categorically denying the accusations, made by left-leaning La Repubblica newspaper. Sismi intelligence agency chief Nicolo Pollari is due to address a closed-door parliamentary panel over the matter on November 3. Bush cited intelligence that Iraq sought uranium from Africa in his State of the Union address in 2003 before the Iraq war.
As MSM hero Joe Wilson so reported at the time.
The claim fuelled criticism from the husband of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose identity was later leaked, sparking a scandal that led to the indictment of Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby.
This sentence would have been Pulitzer material if it had contained the word quagmire.
"I have never been convinced that war was the best system to make a country democratic and help it escape dictatorship, even a bloody one," Berlusconi was quoted as saying by La7.
We should have left Mussolini in power.