Free Republic

The last time the United States elected a Democrat as its president to govern with a majority-Democratic Congress, an immediate fracas arose over gays in the military, reinforcing a partisan story line that Democrats can't be trusted with the nation's security. Sixteen years later, some will certainly be watching how deftly President-elect Barack Obama salutes, or how House Speaker Nancy_Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid say the Pledge of Allegiance. These are symbols, of course, but the national security challenges the nation faces now are anything but symbolic: two wars, an ongoing terrorist menace, a growing list of unmet...

(IsraelNN.com) Vice President-elect Joe Biden has appointed former Clinton administration aide Ran Klain as his chief of staff, one week after President-elect Barack Obama tapped Clinton aide Rahm Emanuel to head the White House as chief of staff. Both appointees are Jewish, but while Emanuel is an observant Jew, Klain intermarried more than 20 years ago and his family observes Christmas. Klain, like Emanuel, promoted the Oslo Peace Accords, which eventually exploded into the Oslo War that has been raging since September, 2000. Emanuel choreographed the handshake between Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin and Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn...

(IsraelNN.com) According to a report on Middle East Newsline, President-elect Barack Obama has dispatched his "senior foreign policy adviser", Robert Malley to Egypt and Syria to outline Obama's policy on the Middle East. Malley reportedly relayed a promise from Obama that the United States would seek to enhance relations with Cairo and reconcile differences with Damascus. "The tenor of the messages was that the Obama administration would take into greater account Egyptian and Syrian interests," an aide to Malley was quoted as saying. The aide said Obama plans to launch a U.S. diplomatic initiative toward Syria. Malley met both Egyptian...

(IsraelNN.com) According to a report on Middle East Newsline, President-elect Barack Obama has dispatched his "senior foreign policy adviser", Robert Malley to Egypt and Syria to outline Obama's policy on the Middle East. Malley reportedly relayed a promise from Obama that the United States would seek to enhance relations with Cairo and reconcile differences with Damascus. "The tenor of the messages was that the Obama administration would take into greater account Egyptian and Syrian interests," an aide to Malley was quoted as saying. The aide said Obama plans to launch a U.S. diplomatic initiative toward Syria. Malley met both Egyptian...

Violence is down in Iraq because of actions taken by Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the U.S. military, but the Iraqi people “are not better off than they were before,” said retired Gen. Wesley Clark in an interview with CNSNews.com following his speech at the U.S.-Arab Policymakers Annual Conference on Thursday.

Obama To Wesley Clark; Your services aren’t needed. Audacity indeed. “General Wesley Clark is not attending the Democratic National Convention. I was told by General Clark’s personal office in Little Rock that he would not be attending. Clark was informed by Barack Obama’s people that there was no reason to come. General Clark has been given no role of any kind at the convention. Rubbing salt in the wound even more, the “theme” of Wednesday’s Democratic convention agenda is “Securing America.” Wesley Clark’s PAC also happens to be called SECURING AMERICA.”….

It is upsetting when current or former military personnel tear apart the troops in some way. Supporters of the military and those currently serving become incensed when individuals with military backgrounds like Congressman John Murtha, D-PA, Senator John Kerry, D-MA, and General Wesley Clark make anti-military remarks. General Wesley Clark is particularly disturbing. Unlike Murtha and Kerry, Clark was actively involved in directing troop movement with a very high military rank in the recent past. While Democratic supporters boast about his Army background, few mentioned his sour condescending nature toward the military. Clark stuck his foot in his mouth back...

The rumor that Wesley Clark was not welcomed at Obama's party in Denver is now confirmed by Wesley Clark's son, Wesley Clark Jr. Clark's son just posted a comment on dailykos. I can't post the link here, but here's the quotes. For a long time but we have a very active business that he needs to travel a lot for. He wasn't invited to speak at the convention. I'm sure somebody in his office called the campaign and asked if he was going to be invited to speak because he needs to book meetings for that week if he isn't...

General Wesley Clark speaking at Yearly Kos Convention in Chicago, 2007) General Wesley Clark is not attending the Democratic National Convention. I was told by General Clark's personal office in Little Rock that he would not be attending. Clark was informed by Barack Obama's people that there was no reason to come. General Clark has been given no role of any kind at the convention. Rubbing salt in the wound even more, the "theme" of Wednesday's Democratic convention agenda is "Securing America." Wesley Clark's PAC also happens to be called SECURING AMERICA. This is a mistake in my view. There...

Because the Obama camp has announced the theme for Wednesday night will be "securing America's future," and that the VP nominee will speak on that night, many have openly pondered about the VP being General Wesley Clark. How would Clark rate as the VP nominee? A few days ago, I posted a column on the Obama campaign's choice to thematically tie the Vice Presidential nominee to their Wednesday night agenda on national security and foreign affairs. Obama's people have titled Wednesday night as "Securing America's Future." Coincidentally, or perhaps not, this slogan also happens to be the mantra of WesPac,...

It's a slow news day, so why not throw a little humor out there? Here's Kerry on today's Meet The Press, interviewed by Tom Brokaw: MR. BROKAW: We're going to get to all those issues, but I also want to raise what a surrogate for Senator Obama had to say to my friend Bob Schieffer on "Face the Nation." This is former General Wesley Clark talking about John McCain. He said, "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president." He described him as untested and untried. With all due respect,...

John McCormack catches Wes Clark in a couple of egregious errors on the surge today on Morning Joe. The lesser mistake is Clark’s insistence that the surge didn’t involve Anbar at all, when as McCormack notes the Marines sent two extra battalions to the hotbed of terrorist activity as part of the increased deployment. Worse, though, Clark tries to tell Scarborough that the surge had nothing to do with the Marines, and everything to do with the Saudis paying off the Sunni tribes: This isn’t exactly a lost history. Actually, 4,000 extra Marines went to Anbar. The extra Marine battalions...

It looks as if Wesley Clark is waving the white flag -- sort of -- in an attempt to avoid more discussion of his remarks on "Face the Nation" a week ago suggesting that John McCain's military experience didn't at all qualify him to be president. When the former general and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate was criticized for those remarks, he dug in and defended them. Then members of his own party begged him to get off center stage. "On a scale of 1 to 10, Clark's words were a 10 in terms of unhelpfulness," a prominent Democratic consultant told...

If you’re Barack Obama, and you’re looking for a retired general to make the implausible case that you’re ready to handle America’s national security concerns, you can’t afford to be choosy. So Obama is stuck with Wesley Clark – a man whose public utterances are usually bizarre and often hilarious. Clark stepped in it a week ago on CBS’s Face the Nation when he offered the following scintillating assessment of John McCain’s qualifications: “Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.” Oh, to be sitting with Obama as he...

Mr. Clark I am very confused by your recent comments suggesting that McCain being a prisoner of war didn't qualify as experience when it came to being commander in chief. So I was curious to see how long Senator McCain was a prisoner of war, and did you know that Senator McCain was a POW in VIETNAM longer than Obama has been a senator? that's right see McCain was held and tortured by our enemies from 1967 to 1973 Obama has only been in the senate since he took the oath of office in 2005, even if I give Obama...

Kosovo war commander and decorated Vietnam vet Wesley Clark was never shot down during war. Maybe that's why the retired general, ex-NATO war leader and former presidential candidate chose this aspect of John McCain's war record to carp about last Sunday, when he said, "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president." Yet McCain wasn't just shot down. He also was brutalized and tortured during five years of North Vietnamese captivity, a period during which McCain gallantly refused the early release his captors offered because he was an admiral's son....

Four days after his controversial “Face the Nation” appearance, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark is taking a break from the presidential campaign — but many Democratic insiders think he has already been crossed off the list of Barack Obama’s potential running mates. Sunday morning on CBS News, Clark argued that John McCain’s military experience — and his years as a prisoner of war — in no way qualified him to be president. Following his appearance, one prominent liberal blog, apparently seeing the genie as out of the bottle, launched into a considerably harsher attacks on McCain’s service headlined “Honestly, besides...

Let’s leave aside for a moment General Weasley Clark’s increasingly embarrassing attempts to defend his “Face the Nation” claim that “his hero” John McCain is actually unqualified for the presidency. When asked by a half-dozen interviewers to specify one area in which his candidate, Barack Obama, is actually MORE qualified than McCain, the Weasley One always returns to the same word – “judgment.” Obama’s qualified, in other words, because he displayed better judgment than McCain on the issue of the Iraq War. But there’s an obvious follow-up to this argument that General Clark hasn’t yet faced.. He suggests that “judgment”...

It was perverse -- not to mention tone-deaf and foolish -- for Barack Obama's supporters to pick the week of July Fourth to attack John McCain's military background. The cliche rings true: With political friends like these, Obama doesn't need enemies. First up was retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who told CBS' "Face the Nation" that "I don't think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president." That was tame compared with a vile posting by the nut-roots liberal Americablog.com headlined "Honestly, besides being tortured, what did McCain do to excel in...

WASHINGTON - Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, an advisor to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, says being shot down in an airplane doesn't qualify one to be president, a reference to Sen. John McCain's experience in Vietnam. He is absolutely correct. But it also doesn't make him any less qualified. In fact, it gives McCain a perspective on war and its horrors that his opponent, who quickly disavowed Clark's unapologetic comment, certainly doesn't have. And from that standpoint it puts the presumptive Republican nominee even further up on the Oval Office qualifications meter. It is doubtful many voters would...