Following are excerpts from a press conference with former Lebanese minister Wiam Wahhab, which aired on Al-Manar TV on November 7, 2007.
Reporter: In his own special way, the head of the Lebanese Unification Movement, former minister Wiam Wahhab, ridiculed the American Treasury’s decision to freeze his hypothetical assets in the US. He declared that he was donating this money to U.S. President George Bush and to his secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for pseudo-humanitarian purposes. On the other hand, U.S. Ambassador to Beirut Jeffrey Feltman did not receive any of the contribution, for reasons explained by Wahhab.
Wiam Wahhab: They are welcome to all the money I have in America. Rice should take half of it to improve the way she looks. She should have her teeth straightened and her face fixed, and should make herself look nice. I donate what is left to George Bush, because I know he will soon be admitted to a mental asylum because of his policies. This man is by now three-quarters crazy, and within six or seven months, he will be completely crazy. When he completes his term in office, this man, who is so infatuated with ruling, with destroying the world, with killing, and with attacking people, will undoubtedly end up in a lunatic asylum. The American ambassador here does not need my donation, because he gets hefty bribes. That’s right. He gets hefty bribes. I call upon his government, if it wants to maintain its credibility, to search his accounts, and to examine all the presents he will be taking with him to the U.S., because these will be very generous, I am told.
You can see that interview http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1606.htm
Blair might be worth 200K or more per lecture these days, but I’d much rather go see Wiam Wahhab. He’s like a Lebanese George Galloway: I may not agree with all the substance, but his words have a poetic quality that survives translation.