Gen. Clark: Saddam Not a Criminal

NewsMax.com ^ | 9/21/03 | Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff

[kattracks]

In a little noticed interview with Fortune Magazine last week, presidential frontrunner Gen. Wesley Clark defended Saddam Hussein against charges that he was engaged in crimes against his own people at the time the Iraq war started, contending instead that the Iraqi dictator should have gotten a pass because his atrocities took place ten years ago.

Asked why it was right for President Clinton to use military force to halt Slobodan Milosevic's crimes against humanity in Kosovo, but not for President Bush to do the same thing against Saddam, Clark said that in Iraq, "The imminence of stopping a guy from committing a crime in progress - it wasn't there."

"In Kosovo you had ethnic cleansing actually unfolding, and we had intervened to stop it," the ex-NATO commander insisted, without commenting on the torture chambers, rape rooms and mass graves discovered in Iraq by coalition forces.

Instead, the Democratic frontrunner suggested that the Iraqi dictator deserved a pass by outlining what Fortune described as Clark's "Statute of Limitations for Genocidal Thugs."

"It was ten years ago that Saddam brutalized the Shiite Muslims in the south," he argued. "And he used chemical weapons 15 years ago."

Instead, said the retired military man, Saddam brutality was really no worse than crimes committed by leaders in China more than a decade ago, telling Fortune:

"We still deal with communist China, right? During the Cultural Revolution they had cannibalism in China. And the same guys that ran over the students in Tiananmen, they're still there."

Fortune writer Bill Powell pointed out, however, that while China is still a police state, "the recently departed General Secretary Jiang Zemin, to take but one example, was promoted from mayor of Shanghai to succeed Deng Xiaoping in part because he avoided bloodshed during Tiananmen. . . . Have you ever heard of Saddam promoting someone because he avoided killing somebody?"

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

2004 Elections
Saddam Hussein/Iraq

[ChadGore]

Does it bother anyone when an american shills for a deposed socialist dictator ?

[sd-joe]

Yes. Wussy Clark is a certified nut job.

[LADY J]

Clark = Looney Toon!!!!!!

[finnman69]

Meanwhile Scumbag Clinton is calling for the arrest of Ratko Mladic whom his boy Gen. Wesley Clark played hat trade with.

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. What do you do with a man with that kind of moral cluelessness? Promote him.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1512&ncid=703&e=11&u=/afp/20030920/wl_afp/bosnia_srebrenica_us_clinton

Clinton urges reconciliation in Bosnia, arrest of war crimes suspects

Sat Sep 20,11:55 AM ET Add World - AFP to My Yahoo!

SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Hercegovina (AFP) - Former US president Bill Clinton (news - web sites) urged reconciliation among Bosnia's three ethnic communities at the site of Europe's worst atrocity since World War II, calling for the arrest of those responsible for the Srebrenica massacre.

"For much of its history Bosniacs (Muslims), Croats and Serbs have lived together in peace," Clinton said at a ceremony marking the opening of a memorial cemetery for the more than 7,000 victims, attended by some 20,000 Bosnian Muslims.

He stressed that the US-brokered peace agreement ending Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, which pitted the three ethnic communities against each other, gave people "a chance but not the guarantee to live that way once again."

"I hope you can build on the bedrock of Srebrenica in Bosnia-Hercegovina a place where all children are safe and loved and able to live out their dreams," he stressed, speaking on a stage in front of which the remains of 107 Srebrenica victims, wrapped in green cloth, were placed on the ground before burial.

But the former president stressed that those allegedly responsible for the massacre, which he described as a "genocidal madness," were still on the run, more than eight years after Srebrenica.

"Those most responsible for the atrocities, the leaders have not been apprehended. The search for them must continue until they are," Clinton said, in a clear reference to Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.

Interpol wanted page for Ratko Mladic

[FLAUSA]

Wow, talk about not being ready for prime time!

[RightWhale]

Have you ever heard of Saddam promoting someone because he avoided killing somebody?"

Might have happened; it's not impossible. Do we have the mental armor to survive if we get this hypotheticizing tornado for President? It's already getting old.

[eyespysomething]

"We still deal with communist China, right? During the Cultural Revolution they had cannibalism in China. And the same guys that ran over the students in Tiananmen, they're still there."

Well, since Clinton was such good friends with the ChiComm, it is no wonder that nothing was done. But now, we must go after those who are attacking us, the terrorists, and China will have to wait for the moment.

[hardhead]

Wesley Clark is not a general either!

[Tom Bombadil]

Gen. Wesley Clark defended Saddam Hussein against charges

General Ramsey-JimmyCarter-Clark.

What an absolute BOZO this guy is.

[TADSLOS]

Clark can't afford to call Saddam a (war)criminal since he is one also.

[idkfa]

You beat me to it, so here's another.

[kingu]

Thank you, Former Gen. Clark, for exemplifying why Democrats should never be allowed to hold office. Giving civil rights to dictators by putting in a statuate of limitations for genocide? Yeah, right. I wonder how long it would take to visit the Kurd population in Northern Iraq to find a more current attrocity. Three seconds, you think?

[Young Werther]

"In Kosovo you had ethnic cleansing actually unfolding, and we had intervened to stop it," the ex-NATO commander insisted, without commenting on the torture chambers, rape rooms and mass graves discovered in Iraq by coalition forces.

Instead, the Democratic frontrunner suggested that the Iraqi dictator deserved a pass by outlining what Fortune described as Clark's "Statute of Limitations for Genocidal Thugs."

In 1962 Israel found Adolph Eichmann hiding in Argentina. They kidnapped, tried, convicted, and executed him for his implementation of the Final Solution. Little did they know that they were perpetrating a GRAVE INJUSTICE since the Clarkian statute of limitations on genocide had run out?

[EggsAckley]

presidential frontrunner Gen. Wesley Clark

How quickly he has attained this title!!

[Scott from the Left Coast]

Does it bother anyone when an american shills for a deposed socialist dictator ?

Actually, yes it does.

If this is out there and accurate, there will be plenty of RAT liliputians in the race (Lieberman and Kerry to name two) who will be more than happy to burn-out Clark's shooting-star by publicizing this. These guys are in survival mode, trying to remain standing after the inevitable winnowing occurs. They'll take Clark out themselves...with stuff just like this if need be.

[cubreporter]

Clark is one little tin soldier. Watch his head swell and get ahead of his mouth as it has begun to do already.

[finnman69]

"Hey, look at the silly american wearing the war criminal's hat!"

[Scott from the Left Coast]

Clark is the next best definition of Shooting Star.

It'll take him a whole lot less time to burn out than James Dean.

[dts32041]

They don't call him WC for nothing, lift the lid and see what is swirling around.