"I don't know if I would have or not," the Times quotes. "I've said it both ways, because when you get into this, what happens is you have to put yourself in a position. On balance, I probably would have voted for it."
As the interview on the plane proceeded, he called on his press secretary, who was in the front of the plane. "Mary, help!"
Mary to the rescue: "You said you would have voted for the resolution as leverage for a U.N.-based solution."
Clark:"Right. Exactly."
No, he IGNORED the case for war with Iraq, just as all the Democrats (other than Lieberman), and the mainstream media did.
The great divide in the Presidential race is this: those who GET IT, and those who DON'T, vis-a-vis the War on Terror. Let's forget left vs. right, as if we actually have the luxury of playing an ideological parlor game. The philosophical debates about the nature and limits of government, the nature of man, issues of liberty versus tyranny, are age-old, and important debates. Such debates will always be with us. But, for example, after Pearl Harbor, the principal issue wasn’t the creeping socialism of the New Deal, but whether Western Civilization could defeat German fascism and Japanese militarism. After World War II, the ideological debates were rejoined. We’re in a similar situation today.
It would be nice if George W. Bush were the second coming of Russell Kirk. He clearly isn’t. But this little fact is largely irrelevant. The War on Terror is still the biggest issue, and George W. Bush is really the only candidate in the Presidential race who GETS IT. The UN doesn't get it; the European Union doesn't get it; the media doesn't get it; the Democrats (with perhaps Lieberman as the sole exception) don't get it either, and especially Wesley Clark -- for a military man, to not GET the War on Terror and the importance of dethroning Saddam, is a major blindspot.
That's the great divide in America right now. I have faith that the American people still get it. And what they will “get” is that when it’s time to pull the lever, touch the screen, or punch the chad in November 2004, they will conclude that the world is too dangerous a place to allow the Democrats back in power. This isn’t a “left-vs.-right” consideration. This is a consideration much lower on the Maslow hierarchy of political need. It’s civilization versus the savages. And most people “get it.” Wesley Clark doesn't, and that's why his candidacy is doomed.
WESLEY CLARK EXCHANGES HATS WITH CONVICTED BOSNIAN WAR CRIMINAL
On August 27, 1994, Clark, then director of strategy, plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went to Banja Luka - and met with Ratko Mladic, the bloodstained military leader of the Bosnian Serbs. (My note: everybody apparently forgets that before Serbia's the aggression in Bosnia the same Ratko Mladic was military commander of the Serbian army ("Yugoslav Peoples Army") in Croatia and conducted large scale massacres of Croatian civillians there, especially in the ethnically "cleansed of Croatian population "Krajina", another Serb-proclaimed "republic"). The State Departement had advised against the meeting, on account of Mladic's well-documented war crimes in Gorazde, Srebrenica and Sarajevo. Still, Clark and Mladic had a jolly time. Mladic gave Clark some plum brandy and a pistol with a Cyrillic inscription, and the two merrily swapped military hats.
A picture of Wes Clark's "ammo". All duds.
"Breaking Right"
Why doesn't Wesley run for the Baath party, they love him. As an American General, he is pitifully weak in the history department, or his political advisors are. Wars are won and then the REAL work begins; changing a regime doesn't happen over night, it doesn't happen in months. But eventually, the good done will over shadow the murderous past and this is the part that the Iraqi people must adopt and they are, slowly and steadily with the help of the coalition military. Those soldiers are the paste that is holding the wound together until it can heal by itself. The democrats and the French want instant change only because they don't want the Bush administration to have any success. What about the people of Iraq, don't they have a say so? Listening to the Socialist Democrats you would think that we could just walk away from helping further - well they are wrong.
What most of this bad press boils down to is propaganda, spin and political rhetoric. Some reporters are beginning to report the truth - if you can 'hear' it over the Clinton, Clark, and the other 7 dwarfs shouting and wailing; they would have lost Iraq for Iraqis at the get go - they are simply not cut out to go the distance, it takes up too much of their time from other pursuits like raising taxes and very much how they treat the American people - just as soon as they are elected, they leave those who supported them and it's back to business as usual, politics and Washington,D.C.
America, Our Guys got Uday and Qusaylets not forget that monumental success! The left would rather you forget such enormous success the Iraqi people surely have not!
Like using armor to deliver chemical agents on religious nutjobs barricaded in their compound?
That's the kind of fighting Clark knows how to do.
1. I have single-handedly violated Posse Comitatus Act and contributed to the death of 80 Americans in Waco, TX.
2. I have provided air support to an Al Qaeda ally in Bosnia in 1995
3. I have provided air supoport to an Al Qaeda ally in Kosovo in 1999
4. I have guts - I have almost started WWIII. That stupid British general blew it.
5. Unlike Bush, I tell a tall stories. 93 destroyed Serb tanks, for example.
6. I am part of Soros' International Crisis Group. You know Uncle Soros, he contributed $10M to topple Bush.