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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.
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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You don't say...?
In the last Dem debate, the first question was to Clark to explain why he became a Democrat. Well, he went on and on why he did. According to a thread last week, somebody checked after the debate and he still wasn't a Democrat !!!
I dislike candidates who mislead, those whose resumes and experiences don't make sense with their views, and those who don't have a track record of actually voting on these tough issues.
It's easy for Clark to say he would've opposed the war, yet his track record seems to be to come in shooting. He obviously has no passion for the views he espouses today.
The other one is Dean. He's disclaimed many of his previous views about pulling out of Iraq and Social Security age. He has no track record in voting for things that would apply to the whole country. He's delusional enough to think that supervising the state of tree-huggers, gentleman farmers, lunatics of all ilks (and not that many) somehow qualifies him to run the world. Nothing in his resume suggests he would feel the pain of those whom he pretends to represent.
They're both stealth candidates. We'd all be better off with someone who has a voting track record.
There were about 500,000 refugees on the Albanian and Macedonian boarders. It was only then that the international community decided to do something, because nobody wanted to take those people in.
People that decide if a war is justified based on if thier party is for it are dangerous.
People that think that those refugees should have been left to die, because they were Muslim or brown people, sicken me.
If you've got good criticism of how some administration administered some war, it's all good. Just don't use Milosovic's talking points; they're a bit tainted.
I've heard liberals say similar things:
"Clark may have voted for Reagan and Bush's dad."
"Look at Republicans for Dean, look at his fiscally conservative record as govenor."
Both of these guys apposed the war when it was popular, and now benifit from it being unpopular. And because they seem to be "out siders", liberals think the DLC has sold them out. Though Clark is charged as being a DLC steal
He has no track record in voting for things that would apply to the whole country.
How were the last two guys from Texas and Arkansas any different?
At least they had a publicly recorded history of policy advocacy/initiative and political effectiveness. But, this is the least of Clark's problems in my mind.
Of course, to 'Rat voters, this is a positive. If those baby-killing war-mongers in the Pentagon don't like Weasely Clark, he must be their kind of guy! All that talk about character and integrity from the baby killers is just code-talk for covering one another's butts, isn't it?
< /sarc >
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