And X42 is always happy to provide the spiral of sticky thread.
Posted on 09/18/2003 12:25:15 PM PDT by areafiftyone
WASHINGTON—A Montreal man has emerged as the key figure in a controversy that has dogged Democratic presidential aspirant Wesley Clark during the summer months.
Questions have swirled since June when the former NATO commander alleged on national television that he was pressured to link the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in a mystery phone call he received.
Clark first implied the call, not long after the attacks, might have come from White House, then later said it came from a Middle Eastern think tank in Canada. He has never identified the caller.
As Clark kicked off his campaign yesterday in Little Rock, Ark., Thomas Hecht, founder of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies, told the Star he placed the call to Clark and drew his attention to a potential link between Saddam and the Al Qaeda suicide hijackers.
But Hecht said he did not pressure the former army general, who became a CNN commentator after retiring from the military, to make the link and said the matter was raised in a phone call inviting Clark to come to Montreal for a speech.
Clark's original claim and its subsequent variations had drawn much press and Internet attention in the United States as it became increasingly clear he was set to become the 10th candidate for the Democratic nomination.
Clark told the widely watched NBC show Meet the Press June 15 that the pressure to make the link "came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over.
"I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, `You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.'"
Clark, in the interview, said he asked for evidence of the link and received none and still hasn't seen any evidence.
As he prepared for his presidential bid, Clark backed away from his comment, denying he was drawing a link to the White House, telling Fox News in July: "I personally got a call from a fellow in Canada who is part of a Middle Eastern think tank who gets inside intelligence information. He called me on 9/11."
Later in July, in another television interview, he said: The call came from "a man from a Middle East think tank in Canada, the man who's the brother of a very close friend of mine in Belgium. He's very well connected to Israeli intelligence and he follows Middle Eastern events very closely."
Hecht said his sister, who lives in Brussels, knows Clark socially.
One columnist, George Will of the Washington Post, took Clark to task because, he said, there was no Middle East think tank in Canada.
The Begin-Sadat Centre has its headquarters in Israel and its only office elsewhere is the one Hecht established in Montreal. Former prime minister Brian Mulroney is on its board, but strictly in a ceremonial role, Hecht said.
Hecht said he called Clark either Sept. 12 or Sept. 13 — not the morning of the attacks, as the former general said — but he merely passed on information he had received from Israel which drew a purported link.
Hecht said Clark called him in Montreal Sept. 7 this year to clarify the conversation the two men had, perhaps in anticipation of the question being raised again as part of his campaign.
"I told him the Begin-Sadat Centre is a center for strategic studies in Israel and has made various studies on the Iraqi threat to the state of Israel and therefore we have carried out analyses of what connection there could be between Saddam Hussein and other militant Islamic groups," Hecht said.
"I don't know why I would be confused with the White House. I don't even have white paint on my house," he added. "I saw those comments he made and I just chuckled."
The Clark campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
It's painfully clear from the transcript that Clark not only doesn't refute the claims about the White House pressuring others to make an Iraq 9/11 link, he reinforces the idea with a claim that he can't reveal his "sources."
From Wesley Clark and Terry McAuliffe -From the August 25, 2003 issue of The Weekly Standard
Referring to the Russert transcript ..., Hannity said of the call, "I think you owe it to the American people to tell us who."Clark replied, "It came from many different sources, Sean."
HANNITY: "Who? Who?"
CLARK : "And I personally got a call from a fellow in Canada who is part of a Middle Eastern think tank who gets inside intelligence information. He called me on 9/11."
HANNITY: "That's not the answer. Who in the White House?"
CLARK: "I'm not going to go into those sources."
Clark had the opportunity to clarify the record and clearly state the he had no personal knowledge that the White House was trying to pressure others into making a bogus Iraq 9/11 link and he intentionally chose not to do so. Why?
Face it, GoOrdnance, Clark is a liar and a manipulator.
It's the same phenomenon as FBI agents feeling pressure to lie about Iraq intelligence because the vice president spent some time in their building or CNN feeling pressured to self censor somehow by Fox News.
Look, even the member of the mid-east think tank who was based in Canada said that Clark said that it was the White House that contacted him, as you can see from the quote below:
"I don't know why I would be confused with the White House. I don't even have white paint on my house," he added. "I saw those comments he made and I just chuckled."
Nice cute answer which ingores the rest of my comments to which you have no response.
The fact is that Clark was called "The Supreme Being" (not out of admiration) by his subordinates. He has thrown tantrums when other officers have not cleared a path for him at social events. There are specific officers who have been quoted by name on this. You know this. But you choose to ignore it, as you chose to totally ignore my revealing your arguments as specious and full of strawmen (for example, as Clark being worth of respect just from having served and being wounded, which is nonsense because Hitler himself served and was wounded in WWI).
There is a "third way".
Concerning the voters that he intends to appeal to, Clark has done the "strong defense"/"moderate domestic" straddle. PLUS, he has specifically targeted "those silent voters, the ones that came out to vote for Ross Perot."(!!!)
Pregnant pause...
Could it be that, after exhuming the corpse of the Reform Party and its body of disaffected and alienated conservatives, Clark might bolt the primaries with an "independent, third party" campaign? And, in the process, reprise the Perot role in the 1992 Bush-Clinton-Perot election -- thereby electing yet another Clinton?
It worked once before...
And, more than anybody, Clark reminds me of Perot -- "the reluctant nutcase warrior from beyond the pale"...
I call it DEMOSEMANTICS. Definition is whatever they want it to be. :o)
And X42 is always happy to provide the spiral of sticky thread.
hermes509
Since Aug 16, 2003
Then who's the WE('ve) that's already covered this about a month ago, Mr. Frenchname?
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