Posted on 10/07/2003 6:54:02 AM PDT by areafiftyone
The latest entry in the Democratic presidential candidate lineup has rocketed to become the top candidate within two weeks of his announcement. General Wesley Clark is a retired general and a Rhodes scholar, and he served as NATO commander during the Kosovo war as well as a CNN commentator during the Iraq war this spring.
His words of July 11 sound like the kind of straight talk that could reassure Americans increasingly uncertain about the direction of the war in Iraq: “When I was in the military,” he said, “I took an oath to uphold the Constitution. There is nothing in the Constitution that says you can mislead people.”
But in one astonishing statement three days before General Clark announced his candidacy, his former boss, General H. Hugh Shelton, raised the most serious questions about General Clark’s military record, which is, of course, all he really has to run on. General Shelton, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 9/11, said: “I’ve known Wes a long time. I will tell you the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character, issues that are very near and dear to my heart.”
According to military historian Thomas Fleming, “This is the most critical statement by one senior military officer on the record on the conduct of another in the history of the United States armed forces.”
General Shelton is not alone in his opinion. General Clark is widely disliked in the Army. Many commentators wondered at the time why General Clark “came out of Europe early.” It was unheard of for General Clark or any NATO commander to be relieved months before his tour was up and quickly retired. Now General Shelton has revealed that the reason General Clark was relieved involved issues of “integrity and character.” Within the military code there could be no more damning statement.
There are clues to General Shelton’s indictment from General Clark’s Kosovo campaign. The war began after a chorus of charges that the Serbians were unleashing genocidal holocaust upon Kosovars, Albanians, and other largely Muslim minorities. And the NATO commander’s headquarters rapidly became an echo of the “5 o’clock follies ” of press misinformation at Army headquarters in Saigon two decades earlier.
Here are a few examples: There were supposed to be 100,000 prisoners detained by the Serbs in a soccer stadium in Pristina. An Agence France Presse reporter dropped by the stadium a few days later and admired its green grass and empty seats with the single caretaker on the site.
NATO headquarters passed along Albanian allegations that Serbian victims were being incinerated at a Trpca mine smelter. But when interviewed by reporter Ben Works, NATO officers admitted they had monitored the site during the entire war and the smelter had never been fired up.
Even the NATO bomb-damage assessment team General Clark sent in after the truce found that instead of the several hundred Serbian tanks that General Clark had claimed were destroyed by his air war, there were only 12 and about as many personnel carriers. As for atrocities, according to Mr. Works, General Clark’s team found “no credible indications of large-scale atrocities or any other pattern of smaller-scale crimes against humanity.”
If General Clark was singularly unsuccessful in his high-altitude air war on the Serb forces, which he had predicted would bring victory in a few days, it caused a lot of civilian casualties. Besides blowing up the Chinese Embassy, some civilian convoys, a lot of radio and television facilities, and an amazing number of chicken coops, one incident stands out.
A train loaded with civilians was crossing a bridge near Grdelica when it was attacked by NATO F-15 s. A dozen were killed and many wounded. In briefing the press, General Clark termed it “unfortunate.” General Clark ran gun camera photo footage. “You can see, if you are focusing on your job as a pilot, how suddenly that train appeared.” NATO was claiming their target was the bridge and the train was moving so fast they couldn’t reinstruct the missile in time to avoid the train.
When one looks at the film, the train appears to jump suddenly into the frame.There was only one problem: According to the Ottawa Citizen’s Scott Taylor, the film had been doctored.The F-15 s had made two passes and hit the bridge the first time, knocking out the train’s electrical power. On the second pass, they hit the train. The two segments were spliced together so it looked like the stationary train was moving.
This is not the only time General Clark suffered from the failure of monitoring cameras. Cameras also failed at the tragic bombing at the village of Korisa, which killed 87 Albanian civilians, and at the final assault on the Koresh compound at Waco. Some 86 civilians were killed in the assault, in which 17 armored vehicles and personnel as well from the First Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, commanded by General Clark, participated.
Mistakes happen. Subordinates send up bad or intentionally skewed information. The fog of war makes any headquarters press communications difficult at best. But if General Shelton and Defense Secretary William Cohen were receiving reports as misleading as the ones furnished to the press by General Clark’s headquarters, it couldn’t have made their task any easier.
General Clark is the leading Democratic candidate for president. He is also the only candidate who is registered with several agencies, including the Defense Department, as a paid lobbyist. To avoid a possible conflict of interest, did he tell CNN he was a registered Defense lobbyist when he signed on as their on-air military commentator? According to CNN spokesman Mark Furman, “We did not know.” When CNN fired him, General Clark blamed the influence of President Bush, which CNN denied.
Perhaps for General Clark, like President Clinton, another brilliant Rhodes Scholar Arkansan who served as General Clark’s commander in chief, it may depend on what the word “mislead” means.
Excellent points, exactly the points I've been making. Milosevic and Hussein both massacred thousands of people- Milo throughout what was Yugoslavia, Hussein in his own country, both acts were reprehensible, regardless of who the victims were (skin color, religion). Both were despicable tyrants, and both deserved to be clobbered.
Having said that, Weasel Clark is a lying, opportunistic lowlife that must be stopped from becoming our President.
Perhaps it is printed in the same book where fellatio is not sex.
BBC reported this THREE DAYS AFTER the bombing started
The British Defence Minister George Robertson said that numbers of refugees and internally displaced people were "increasing rapidly". "There are REPORTED TO BE be 30,000 people in the open," he said."There are reports of large numbers of refugees waiting to cross the border into Albania."
Yes, people flee when bombs fall on their heads, as the dynamics of border crossings shows.
Your 500,000 figure is bold faced lie. No wonder you have Lefty as a part of your handle.
Having said that, Weasel Clark is a lying, opportunistic lowlife that must be stopped from becoming our President.
Ok, here's the deal. There are lots of pissed liberals out there. They're pretty mobilized and have a serious chance of beating Bush. It is in everyone's interest to keep them from nominating some corrupt SOB.
If you tell your liberal friends "Clark is scary because of XYZ", they may just listen too you. They don't want thier campaign hijacked by some puppet. But, if you try to convince them every democratic candidate is a baby eating monster, they're going to think you're just politicing.
Could you give me an idea which other candidates have real dirt on them and scare you as much as Clark? Are there any that are clean, but just have a platform opposite yours?
My biggest beef with Clark are his leftist policies- the ones he suddenly espouses. Waco was bad, sure, but ultimately, what I really despise about him is his parroting the ultra-liberal mantras... Trying to "out-Dean" Dean.
I don't care about dirt. I think that kind of politics is reprehensible... It's the issues that matter, and Clark is on the wrong side on all of the major issues.
I'll put it this way: wouldn't you rather have an honest progressive/liberal with integrity than a crook that sells out that base?
You're kidding, right? How many oxymorons can you fit into one sentence? I know of NO honest liberals... NONE. All they have is lies/distortions/deceipt going for them. If they were honest about all of their views, and didn't spin, they'd have about 20% of the votes, TOPS.
The tactics of the war involved destroying or crippling the civilian infrastructure (roads, bridges, electrical power systems, workplaces that were NOT owned by New World Order multinationals, etc.), plus some groups of civilians themselves. The modus operandi of some of the NATO pilots was to bomb a bridge full of people, and then wait for others to come and help the victims. Then the pilots would bomb the bridge again to kill the rescuers!!! If anyone doesn't beleive me, look up the town of Varvarin on Google. Also look up the town of Srdilica, which suffered another horrendous clinton/KLArk-inspired civilian atrocity!!!! Neither town was anywhere near a military target!
Now the major-league war criminal KLArk is running for President, and all too many Democrat dupes are taking his bait!! They think that he is the great Democratic hope to rescue their party and lead it to victory in the next election. In reality, electing KLArk would be a MAJOR DISASTER for our whole country, and for the world!!!! The only way to top such a disaster is to elect Hillary Rodham Izetbegovic Khomeini as President!!!
All they have is lies/distortions/deceipt going for them. If they were honest about all of their views, and didn't spin, they'd have about 20% of the votes, TOPS.
I'm sure there are liberals that think the same of conservatives.
Maybe I'm naive but I'm inclined to think there people on both sides that believe the crap their selling and of coarse those that are liars. Then again I'm kind of centrist.
If liberals would rather have crooked "liberals" in office than republicans and conservatives rather crooked "conservatives" than democrats, the country will be run by a bunch of crooks.
I don't think most Americans are aware of the fact that that sort of thing has been totally illegal since 1947. They apparently wanted to insure that nothing like the big bombing raids of WW-II in which 50,000 or 200,000 people got incinerated ever happened again and the Geneva conventions of 47 totally outlaw the kinds of crap which were perpetrated during the Kosovo operation. Wesley Clark, Albright, and both Clintons need to be tried as war criminals.
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