Posted on 09/24/2003 10:43:43 AM PDT by fight_truth_decay
As a military analyst on television, Wesley Clark argued early that President Bush failed to make the case for the Iraq war. He predicted incisively that America would win quickly but face deadly trouble in the aftermath.
Where some Democratic presidential candidates have criticized Bush's foreign policy and postwar leadership with the benefit of hindsight, Clark can claim to have raised similar questions with foresight. So far, so good, for his new presidential campaign.
Less conveniently for his political aspirations, however, Clark at times heaped praise on Bush and his team for skillfully handling the Iraqi operation - even so far as to say the president should be proud for forging ahead despite the naysaying.
On Bush's broader war on terror, Clark expressed confidence, well into the Afghan conflict, that the United States was moving deliberately to win the global campaign. Now, as a candidate, he characterizes the Bush administration's actions from the start as "obfuscation and slow investigations and memos and shenanigans and creating departments."
It doesn't suit Democratic contenders for the presidency to say anything nice about Bush, and Clark is hardly alone in playing up criticism that would have seemed unpatriotic when America was at war.
But the former NATO supreme commander comes to the campaign with a unique body of work - a huge volume of opinions, insight, guesswork and play-by-play commentary on the chaos of the day, delivered as a military analyst for CNN and frequent contributor to newspapers during the Iraq and Afghan wars.
Some portions of that portfolio are more helpful to his campaign than others.
In this politically charged climate, America's record in Iraq is fair game for Democrats, and Clark is attacking Bush full bore on it. "What is the intent, what is the plan, Mr. President?" Clark demanded in a warm-up to announcing his candidacy last week. "Because the commander in chief better have a plan, and we haven't heard it yet."
Months earlier, Clark was full of admiration for the way the Bush team was conducting the military operation. He spoke of a "very strong leadership team in this government" and marveled at how "everybody there is galvanized by the mission."
That's not to say Clark agreed with the decision to attack.
"The administration has never been able to make the case effectively," he argued in February, shortly before the war began. "The American public doesn't understand the urgency of this, and there's not broad support."
He asked Americans then not to blame the soldiers because they were only following orders into battle. "And my concern is that this is a political issue; the president and his party put this forward," he said bitingly.
Clark also was cautious about plunging into battle after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when many Americans were out for vengeance.
Three days after the attacks, he counseled this response: "It's fundamentally a police effort against individuals. It's not a military effort directed against factories and airfields. You may still need to use military force, but you have to use it in a very precise way."
It became a huge military effort to uproot the government of Afghanistan and the terrorist network it harbored. Clark seemed to swing behind the strategy once it was set, and he voiced confidence in the outcome.
On Iraq, before any shots were fired, Clark sketched out the dangers that would follow the fall of Saddam Hussein.
"I think there will be a lot of tensions inside Iraq, and I think that we will be welcomed very warmly at the outset but afterward, as these tensions begin to assert themselves, it'll be convenient for many different groups to look on us as the source of their problems rather than the solution," he said in February. "And I think our troops will be at some risk there."
Once the war started, Clark praised many aspects of the battle plan and provided a steadying voice when things were not going well.
He was particularly impressed with cooperation among the branches of the armed forces and their coordination with the CIA and credited the Bush administration with that result.
"In the first place, this is a trained and experienced team of top leaders," he said.
Clark occasionally sounded as if he'd supported the war all along.
"President Bush and Tony Blair should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt," he wrote in The Times of London in the first flush of the takeover of Baghdad.
And in June, he spoke as if his only change of heart had been over whether it was vital to capture Saddam, deposed Iraqi president.
"I was one of those before the war who said, `Don't focus on Saddam Hussein. Go in there, take over the government, and you'll take care of things.'" Afterward, he came to the view that Iraq could not be secure with Saddam still at large.
Clark's stance on the validity of the war is still an open question. Last week, he said he probably would have voted for the Iraq war resolution in Congress but asserted the next day: "I would never have voted for this war. Never."
However, your title "WESLEY CLARK EXCHANGES HATS WITH CONVICTED BOSNIAN WAR CRIMINAL" is factually wrong.
At the time pic was taken in 1994 Gen. Mladic was not convicted, not even indicted by the Kangaroo Kourt in The Hague. That happened in November 1995 and pic is dated 1994.
Spreading falsities only provides support to Weasley Clark and I believe it was not your intent.
Regarding Bosnia, methinks you need a refresher course. FR is one of the best places to get the right information. Perhaps this article by LTC Sray is good start.
Followed by this one. Check what other Freepers think.
Jossef Bodansky and others were giving the warning prior to 9-11, but no one listened. As a result, there is yet another Clinton legacy.
Always remember and never forget that without Clinton's and Clark's support to Jihadists in Bosnia 9-11 would not happen.
First he'll check with his press secretary to determine what he believes, and then he'll mumble something about "mass graves."
This is the kind of B.S. you've posted before, like saying Bush said Iraq was an imminent threat to us when in fact he didn't. No claim the Bush admin. made has been refuted by them (or anyone else). The Bush administration never gave 9/11, or at least the claim that Iraq was involved in it, as a reason. The ties to terrorism and WMD's were both reasons given. The Al Qaeda tie is irrefutable. Also, the assertion was always one of connections with terrorism, of which Al Qaeda was just one element. About the only thing that can be said is that they are no longer talking much about WMD's, but they have not said that was not a reason.
it has been known for years that Saddam armed and financed Ansar al Islam, a force of some six to seven hundred extremists that operated a terror camp in northern Iraq’s no-fly zone, controlling a string of villages along the Iranian border of the Kurdish self-rule area. It has long been known that senior Ansar members trained at a camp in Afghanistan that specialized in the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons, such as ricin. And it is hardly a secret that a very senior al Qaeda leader named Abu Mussab al Zarqawi fled Afghanistan after the Taliban was defeated, and had his injured leg treated in a Baghdad hospital – surely with the knowledge of the Iraqi dictator and his secret police – after which he was sent to create a poison laboratory in the Ansar terrorist cell. The Ansar camp, incidentally, was targeted and annihilated by American warplanes a few weeks ago.
Critics of the Bush policy similarly elected to ignore his October 2002 assertion that Iraq’s terror connection was evidenced by Saddam’s longstanding protection of Abu Abbas, the leader of a terrorist group that in 1985 hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship and murdered an elderly, wheelchair-bound American passenger named Leon Klinghoffer. This was the same Abu Abbas who in recent years, according to FBI counter-terrorism analyst Mathew Levitt, "was the conduit for Saddam Hussein’s financing of the [Palestinian] suicide bombers"; the same Abu Abbas whom three captured Palestinian terrorists recently admitted they had met in December 2000, at which time they were in Iraq for training in the use of weapons and explosives. Earlier this month, US commandoes tracked down and arrested Abbas in Iraq, where he had indeed been living for most of the past seventeen years – just as President Bush told us.
And now, within the past few days, the London Telegraph has reported the monumentally important discovery of top-secret documents in the bombed-out Baghdad headquarters of Iraq’s intelligence service, documents that provide "evidence of a direct link between Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist network and Saddam Hussein’s regime." The newly unearthed papers show that in March 1998, "an al Qaeda envoy was invited clandestinely to Baghdad . . . to establish a relationship between Baghdad and al Qaeda based on their mutual hatred of America and Saudi Arabia." According to the Telegraph report, "[t]he meeting apparently went so well that it was extended by a week and ended with arrangements being discussed for bin Laden to visit Baghdad." Notably, this envoy’s visit took place less than five months before bin Laden’s group bombed two US embassies in Africa.
The subtitle of the article in the WEEKLY STANDARD is that, curiously, the Bush Administration has been strangely silent on the evidence that has been mounting. I would agree, and it is a tad frustrating. But, I think it's all about timing. The Democrats have been running around since May, shooting off their collective mouths about "NO EVIDENCE," and I suspect the Administration has been quietly gathering evidence, which will be put forward in the Kay report on WMD, and probably a similar report on links to terrorism. Can one blame the White House for giving the Dems as much rope as they'll take to hang themselves? This may seem unfair, and politically motivated, but which is worse...the Democrats undercutting our efforts in the war on terror, or the Bush Administration holding back the evidence in order to doom the Democrats? The Democrats daily give aid and comfort to our enemies. If Bush can destroy them all in how he releases the evidence the Dems say doesn't exist, more power to him.
Weasley sure has demonstrated some military genious in the past. He saw the necessity of sending 17 pieces of armor to take out insurgents at Waco, yet was shrewd enough not to send 4 tanks to Somalia requested to support the 75th Ranger battalion fighting psychoatic rebels in the street. In both instances this brilliant strategist managed to get Americans killed needlessly.
See the whole picture and you'll find a self-important blabbermouth.
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