In February, Mr. Putin delivered a blistering speech accusing the United States of undermining international institutions and making the Middle East more unstable through its clumsy handling of the Iraq war.

In this atmosphere, Mr. Guest gave a blistering speech on the issue in April.

"The war has been a catastrophe for our soldiers, who were foolishly sent to war with no plan to win the peace," Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a blistering speech on the Senate floor.

At the banquet, Wallace G. McCauley delivered a blistering speech known as "Opportunity Out of Defeat."

At the same time, Al Gore, derided by Mr. Bush's father as Ozone Man, is planning to give a blistering speech in Nashville about what he calls Mr. Bush's environmental failures.

A few days later, he tacked again, taking a huge gamble with a blistering speech that assailed two Christian conservative leaders as "agents of intolerance."

In a blistering speech Saturday night at a dinner for conservatives, Mr. Buchanan said conservatives in Washington, as epitomized by the President, had lost touch with their ideals and their constituency.

He opened the session with a blistering speech attacking President Clinton.

Last year at an international AIDS conference, Mr. Museveni gave a blistering speech attacking condoms.

One of the biggest cheers of the convention on Monday night was for a blistering speech by Mr. Carter when he suggested that the president had misled the nation into war.