Wes Clark Made Case For Iraq War Before Congress; Transcript Revealed

[tweedyburd]

From Matt Sludge.

I especially like the very last quote.

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX WED JAN 15, 2004 11:28:25 ET XXXXX
WES CLARK MADE CASE FOR IRAQ WAR BEFORE CONGRESS; TRANSCRIPT REVEALED
**World Exclusive**
Two months ago Democratic hopeful Wesley Clark declared in a debate that he has always been firmly against the current Iraq War.
"I've been very consistent... I've been against this war from the beginning," the former general said in Detroit on October 26.
"I was against it last summer, I was against it in the fall, I was against it in the winter, I was against it in the spring. And I'm against it now."
But just six month prior in an op-ed in the LONDON TIMES Clark offered praise for the courage of President Bush's action.
"President Bush and Tony Blair should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt," Clark wrote on April 10, 2003. "Can anything be more moving than the joyous throngs swarming the streets of Baghdad? Memories of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the defeat of Milosevic in Belgrade flood back. Statues and images of Saddam are smashed and defiled."
MORE
Even the most ardent Clark supporter will question if Clark's current and past stand on the Iraq war -- is confusion or deception, after the DRUDGE REPORT reveals:
TWO WEEKS BEFORE CONGRESS PASSED THE IRAQ CONGRESSIONAL RESOLUTION WESLEY CLARK MADE THE CASE FOR WAR; TESTIFIED THAT SADDAM HAD 'CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS'
Less than 18 months ago, Wesley Clark offered his testimony before the Committee On Armed Services at the U.S. House Of Representatives.
"There's no requirement to have any doctrine here. I mean this is simply a longstanding right of the United States and other nations to take the actions they deem necessary in their self defense," Clark told Congress on September 26, 2002.
"Every president has deployed forces as necessary to take action. He's done so without multilateral support if necessary. He's done so in advance of conflict if necessary. In my experience, I was the commander of the European forces in NATO. When we took action in Kosovo, we did not have United Nations approval to do this and we did so in a way that was designed to preempt Serb ethnic cleansing and regional destabilization there. There were some people who didn' t agree with that decision. The United Nations was not able to agree to support it with a resolution."
Clark continued: "There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat... Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time. But the United States right now is on a very much different defensive posture than we were before September 11th of 2001... He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn't have nuclear warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks as would we."
More Clark: "And, I want to underscore that I think the United States should not categorize this action as preemptive. Preemptive and that doctrine has nothing whatsoever to do with this problem. As Richard Perle so eloquently pointed out, this is a problem that's longstanding. It's been a decade in the making. It needs to be dealt with and the clock is ticking on this."
Clark explained: "I think there's no question that, even though we may not have the evidence as Richard [Perle] says, that there have been such contacts [between Iraq and al Qaeda]. It' s normal. It's natural. These are a lot of bad actors in the same region together. They are going to bump into each other. They are going to exchange information. They're going to feel each other out and see whether there are opportunities to cooperate. That's inevitable in this region, and I think it's clear that regardless of whether or not such evidence is produced of these connections that Saddam Hussein is a threat."
END
-----------------------------------------------------------
Filed By Matt Drudge
Reports are moved when circumstances warrant
http://www.drudgereport.com for updates
(c)DRUDGE REPORT 2004
Not for reproduction without permission of the author

[Nimrod]

at Clark's lies

[DeviousJ]

Wasn't this brought up a while back? He basically responded saying he was wrong at the time, or something along those lines

[Isaac]

Originally posted by Nimrod
at Clark's lies

While loving Bush for his, you conflicted sap.

[tweedyburd]

It was brought up in the past, but nothing to this degree. Those quotes at the end, about links to al Quiada not really being that important if unproven, and the fact that he argued in favor of the war to Congress and the op-ed are all new as far as I know...

[Mayfuck]

Oh well I'll take his lies over Dubya's any day.

[Nimrod]

Originally posted by DeviousJ
He basically responded saying he was wrong at the time, or something along those lines

"I was against it last summer, I was against it in the fall, I was against it in the winter, I was against it in the spring. And I'm against it now."

[DeviousJ]

Originally posted by Nimrod
"I was against it last summer, I was against it in the fall, I was against it in the winter, I was against it in the spring. And I'm against it now."

Here's a more timeliney one
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/clark-antiwar.html

[Isaac]

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/polit...ate_10-10.html
WESLEY CLARK: Well, Judy, I would like to rebut this. I am not going to attack a fellow Democrat, because I think everybody on this stage shares the same goal. ( Applause ) I think it's a little... I think it's really embarrassing that a group of candidates up here are working on changing the leadership in this country and can't get their own story straight. Let me tell you what my story is. I always supported taking the problem of Saddam Hussein to the United Nations and bringing international resolve to bear. I would never have voted for war. The Congress made a mistake in giving George Bush an open-ended resolution that enabled him to go to war without coming back to the Congress.

JUDY WOODRUF: But you acknowledge you made a...

WESLEY CLARK: And that's the simple answer to it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You acknowledge...

WESLEY CLARK: At every stage as we walked down through this resolution, since I wasn't in Congress and I was a CNN military commentator, I took the situation as it was and necked it down to look for the least worst choice. I did praise George Bush and Tony Blair for sticking with the offensive in Iraq once it had begun. But I also noted in every op-ed and every comment I ever made that there was not enough forces there, there was not a plan for dealing with it afterwards. And I've said all along, it was not an imminent threat.

[Nimrod]

So then Clark's current position is that he believed "categorically" that Hussein had WMD "without a doubt" but would not advocate going to war. Yeah, that's who I want to be president!

This waffling by Clark should be nothing new.. he's been a Democrat for all of 10 minutes.

[tweedyburd]

Originally posted by Nimrod
So then Clark's current position is that he believed "categorically" that Hussein had WMD "without a doubt" but would not advocate going to war. Yeah, that's who I want to be president!

This waffling by Clark should be nothing new.. he's been a Democrat for all of 10 minutes.

[Homerpalooza]

It's the usual Drudge bullshit. Quotes out of context.

For a couple of short analyses:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/arc...11.html#002415

http://cat-m.forclark.com/story/2004/1/15/11369/7727

The full transcript of Clark's speech that Drudge happily cherry-picks is available at both sites.

[tweedyburd]

Whether you think the statements are out of context or not doesn't negate the fact that the guy unequivically believed Saddam had the weapons we were told he had by the administration. The only thing out of context is that he said some things about not going in until all diplomatic means had been exhausted, which is debatable in and of itself.

Other gems:

"When we took action in Kosovo, we did not have United Nations approval to do this and we did so in a way that was designed to preempt Serb ethnic cleansing and regional destabilization there. There were some people who didn' t agree with that decision. The United Nations was not able to agree to support it with a resolution"

"Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time. "

"I think it's clear that regardless of whether or not such evidence is produced of these [al Queda] connections that Saddam Hussein is a threat."

With that in mind, however, Clark demonstrates remarkable clarity in that speech, and he emphasizes a post-war Iraq in a way that seems he would've done a better job in that area. But his statements, whether Drudge's headline is misleading or not, still tie him to some of the claims liberals say we were lied to about.

Oh, here's some comedic relief from Coulter...

The Democrats' Idea Of A General
January 14, 2004

DEMOCRATS are so delirious about finding a general who is a pacifist scaredy-cat that no one seems to have bothered to investigate whether Wesley Clark is sane.

On "Meet the Press" back in November, Clark described intelligence as "a sort of gray goo as you look at it. You can't see through it, exactly, and if you try to touch it, it gets real sticky and you might actually interfere with the information that you're getting back. So you have to draw inferences from it." No, wait. I'm sorry. I think that was Clark talking about Monica Lewinsky's dress, not national security intelligence.

Meanwhile, Clark recently said that the "two greatest lies that have been told in the last three years" are: "You couldn't have prevented 9/11 and there's another one that's bound to happen." If he were president, Clark says, there would be no more terrorist attacks.

The adversarial watchdog press did not ask Clark to explain how he could guarantee an end to terrorist attacks, but recited Clark's prior statements calling for better intelligence. Apparently, if we could just refine the gray goo of intelligence to a magical terrorist-prediction machine, Clark could put an end to this terrorism nonsense once and for all.

Yes, I suppose if our intelligence agencies knew who the terrorists were and when they were going to strike, we could stop them. And if we knew who all the raving lunatics were, we could prevent these infernal Democratic presidential primary debates. Which reminds me, I think I know how we can win the lottery every week, too.

Liberals scoff at a system to shoot down incoming missiles, but believe that all random suicide bombers can be located and stopped before they strike. Hitting a bullet with a bullet just isn't feasible, so let's concentrate on something doable like predicting the future.

Democrats are utterly unfazed by the fact that Clark is crazier than a March hare. They are so happy to have a pacifist in uniform, they ignore his Norman Bates moments. When this peacenik criticizes the war in Iraq, he can puff up his puny chest and cite his own glorious experience with blood, sweat and tears in the Balkans.

Asked on "Meet the Press" what advice he would give Bush, Clark said: "I'd say, 'Mr. President, the first thing you've got to do is you've got to surrender' -- stop right there and the Kucinich crowd is yours -- 'exclusive U.S. control over this mission. ... Build an international organization like we did in the Balkans.'" Because, as everyone knows, Wesley Clark "built" NATO. This guy sounds more like Al Gore every day.

Asked what countries he proposed to bring into Iraq that weren't there already, Clark said, "I think you ask NATO ... just as I did in Kosovo, because this brings NATO into the problem." NATO is the logical choice for this job because of Iraq's extremely close proximity to the North Atlantic.

Evidently, Clark is sublimely confident that no one remembers anything about his misadventures in the Balkans.

Yugoslavia posed absolutely no threat to the United States -- not imminent, not latent, not burgeoning, not now, not then, not ever. (Unless you count all the U.S. highway deaths caused by Yugos.) The president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, never tried to assassinate a U.S. president. He never shook his fist at the Great Satan. He didn't shelter and fund Muslim terrorists -- though the people we were fighting for did.

In humanitarian terms, Milosevic didn't hold a candle to Saddam Hussein. Milosevic killed a few thousand Albanians in a ground war. Hussein killed well over a million Iranians, Kurds, Kuwaitis and Shias, among others. Milosevic had no rape rooms, no torture rooms, no Odai or Qusai. He didn't even use a wood chipper to dispose of his enemies, the piker.

And yet NATO, led by Gen. Wesley Clark, staged a pre-emptive attack on Yugoslavia.

Under Clark's command, the U.S. bombed the Chinese embassy by mistake, killing three Chinese journalists. Other NATO air strikes under Clark mistakenly damaged the Swiss, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian and Hungarian ambassadors' residences. Despite the absence of ground troops, Yugoslavia took three American POWs, whose release was eventually brokered by Jesse Jackson. America was standing tall.

Clark's forces bombed a civilian convoy by mistake, killing more than 70 ethnic Albanians, and then Clark openly lied about it to the press. First he denied NATO had done it, and when forced to retract that, Clark pinned the blame on an innocent U.S. pilot. As New York Newsday reported on April 18, 1999: "American officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the staff of Army Gen. Wesley Clark, the NATO commander, pointed to an innocent F-16 Falcon pilot who was castigated by the media for blasting a refugee convoy." Eventually, even a model of probity like Bill Clinton was shocked by Clark's mendacity and fired him.

At the end of major combat operations led by NATO Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Wesley Clark, arch-villain Slobodan Milosevic was still in power. (At least Clark won't have to worry about any embarrassing "mission accomplished" photo-ops coming back to haunt him.) Today, almost a decade and $15 billion later, U.S. troops are still bogged down in the Balkans. No quagmire there!

That's the Democrats' idea of a general.

[Homerpalooza]

Gen. Clark surely has muddled up his stance on the war, granted. He's never been as clear-cut as Dean or Lieberman when it's come to his position.

But both you and Drudge are wrong to say that "Wes Clark made the case for the Iraq War Before Congress". He clearly did not. He said "I think it's not time yet to use force against Iraq", "we have the time to build up the force, work the diplomacy, achieve the leverage..." and so forth.

He obviously said some controversial things but he was not for the war, which goes against the subject of this thread.

Hmm, the conservatives must be nervous about this guy to go to all this trouble to smear him...

[Homerpalooza]

http://www.conservativebookservice.c...c6230_full.jpg

[tweedyburd]

Sorry, but the title of the thread is just the headline of his piece, and not something I came up with on my own. I agree it's a bit misleading after reading the full transcript. But my point was that he made statements then, just two weeks prior to Congress's resolution, that fall in line with what he's smearing Bush for now.

I think his statements in the speech were not bad at all. Too bad he can't stick to his guns...

[DeviousJ]

Originally posted by tweedyburd
Sorry, but the title of the thread is just the headline of his piece, and not something I came up with on my own. I agree it's a bit misleading after reading the full transcript. But my point was that he made statements then, just two weeks prior to Congress's resolution, that fall in line with what he's smearing Bush for now.

I think his statements in the speech were not bad at all. Too bad he can't stick to his guns...

Well even those quotes you mentioned, when reading the transcript, are taken out of context. When he said 'Saddam is a threat' he was talking in the friend/neutral/enemy sense, and was making a point that he was still liable to instigate military action against allies in the region. This isn't the same as saying 'Iraq has WMDs and is threatening the US with them'.

And what the hell was that Coulter article? "LOL NATO? Like the North Atlantic is anywhere near Iraq LOLOL!" Christ.

[Toast]

B-b-b-b-but Michael Moore endorsed him!

[lawson]

im a clark hata

[professional wannabe]

who cares? i mean, John Kerry and John Edwards voted for the war in Iraq(i'm not sure if Rich Gephardt voted in favor or not), and they later realized they made a bad choice for doing so.

this article isn't gonna change my opinion of Wes Clark, i'm still supporting his campaign(until one of the other candidates can prove me otherwise).

[Nimrod]

Originally posted by professional wannabe
who cares? i mean, John Kerry and John Edwards voted for the war in Iraq(i'm not sure if Rich Gephardt voted in favor or not), and they later realized they made a bad choice for doing so.

this article isn't gonna change my opinion of Wes Clark, i'm still supporting his campaign(until one of the other candidates can prove me otherwise).

Why? The man has no political experience, was disliked by the Clinton Administration and Bush Administration and has been caught in a number of falsehoods.

[tweedyburd]

Originally posted by DeviousJ


Well even those quotes you mentioned, when reading the transcript, are taken out of context. When he said 'Saddam is a threat' he was talking in the friend/neutral/enemy sense, and was making a point that he was still liable to instigate military action against allies in the region. This isn't the same as saying 'Iraq has WMDs and is threatening the US with them'.

But what about the one where he states they have chemical and biological weapons, and have always had them? I'm not talking about whether he said they were threatning the U.S. with them, but that they had them, period. This is something Bush is always accused of lying about, that they had them at all.

[DeviousJ]

Originally posted by tweedyburd


But what about the one where he states they have chemical and biological weapons, and have always had them? I'm not talking about whether he said they were threatning the U.S. with them, but that they had them, period. This is something Bush is always accused of lying about, that they had them at all.

Huh? We know they had them at some point, because they were used in the Iran/Iraq war (and were supplied by us in part). The question was whether or not they were currently being produced (since these things have a limited shelf life) and whether or not the old stocks had been destroyed - both of which were down to the weapons inspectors who were eventually sidelined and then told to get out. What Bush lied about was having concrete, unequivocal evidence that these weapons existed (including attempts to acquire nuclear materials, don't forget) and he used this evidence to start a war. That's where the difference lies

[Nimrod]

Originally posted by DeviousJ

What Bush lied about was having concrete

They have proven that Iraq can and does produce conrete.

[tweedyburd]

Did General Clark have evidence they existed at the time he said they did?

"Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time."

On a side note, isn't it great how liberals/Democrats like Clark and Dean get the pass by their defenders on positions they used to hold that contradict where they are now, basically saying "that was then, this is now." But when somebody like Christopher Hitchens, for example, is brought up, all they can talk about is how he was once a devoted liberal who wrote for the Nation, so why should anyone listen to his justifications for the war now that his views evolved?

[Nimrod]

Originally posted by tweedyburd
Did General Clark have evidence they existed at the time he said they did?

"Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time."

On a side note, isn't it great how liberals/Democrats like Clark and Dean get the pass by their defenders on positions they used to hold that contradict where they are now, basically saying "that was then, this is now." But when somebody like Christopher Hitchens, for example, is brought up, all they can talk about is how he was once a devoted liberal who wrote for the Nation, so why should anyone listen to his justifications for the war now that his views evolved?

Free pass:

http://www.ariannaonline.com/images/fd.pict.jpg