General Wesley Clark - General Idiot

General Hugh Shelton Won't Vote for Clark

"What do you think of General Wesley Clark and would you support him as a presidential candidate," was the question put to him by moderator Dick Henning, assuming that all military men stood in support of each other. General Shelton took a drink of water and Henning said, "I noticed you took a drink on that one!"

"That question makes me wish it were vodka," said Shelton. "I've known Wes for a long time. I will tell you the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues, things that are very near and dear to my heart. I'm not going to say whether I'm a Republican or a Democrat. I'll just say Wes won't get my vote."

Clark Never Called Karl Rove

by Matthew Continetti The Daily Standard 09/22/2003

WHEN WILL Wesley Clark stop telling tall tales? In the current issue of Newsweek, Howard Fineman reports Clark told Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and University of Denver president Mark Holtzman that "I would have been a Republican if Karl Rove had returned my phone calls."

Unfortunately for Clark, the White House has logged every incoming phone call since the beginning of the Bush administration in January 2001. At the request of THE DAILY STANDARD, White House staffers went through the logs to check whether Clark had ever called White House political adviser Karl Rove. The general hadn't. What's more, Rove says he doesn't remember ever talking to Clark, either.

Wesley Clark's Ties To Muslim Terrorists

Accuracy in Media 09/17/03 Cliff Kincaid

The retired General who had been refusing to declare himself a Democrat or Republican is now declaring himself a Democratic presidential candidate. But more important than his party affiliation is Wesley Clark’s bizarre view on how to fight terrorism. The media refer to Clark’s impressive military credentials but they fail to note that his main accomplishment under President Clinton was presiding over the establishment of a base for radical Islamic terrorism, including Osama bin Laden, in Kosovo.

Clark, who has been making headlines by claiming that the U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq was a misjudgment based on scanty evidence, ran Clinton’s NATO war against Yugoslavia on behalf of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The House of Representatives failed to authorize the war under the War Powers Act, making it illegal. Thousands of innocent people in Serbia, Yugoslavia’s main province, were killed to stop an alleged "genocide" by Yugoslavia that was not in fact taking place. Investigations determined that a couple thousand had died in the civil war there.

Kosovo was a province of Yugoslavia and the military intervention of the U.S. and NATO, a defensive alliance, was unprecedented. It was far more controversial than the policy of regime change in Iraq, which was a policy of Clinton, Bush and the Congress. Kosovo was never a threat to the U.S., and Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic didn’t even pretend to have weapons of mass destruction.

Clark wrote a Time magazine column, "How to Fight the New War," in which he said we need new tactics and strategies against terrorists. He also said, "We need face-to-face information collection: Who are these people, what are their intentions, and what can be done to disrupt their plans and arrest them?"

For the answer, Clark should ask his old friend, Hashim Thaki, the commander of the KLA. The 1998 State Department human rights report had described the KLA as a group that tortured and abducted people and made others "disappear." Yet a photograph was taken of Clark and Thaki with their hands together in a gesture of solidarity.

The KLA’s ties to Osama bin Laden were also well-known and reported.

An article in the Jerusalem Post at the time of the Kosovo civil war had said, "Diplomats in the region say Bosnia was the first bastion of Islamic power. The autonomous Yugoslav region of Kosovo promises to be the second. During the current rebellion against the Yugoslav army, the ethnic Albanians in the province, most of whom are Moslem, have been provided with financial and military support from Islamic countries. They are being bolstered by hundreds of Iranian fighters, or Mujahadeen, who infiltrate from nearby Albania and call themselves the Kosovo Liberation Army. U.S. defense officials say the support includes that of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi terrorist accused of masterminding the bombings of the U.S. embassies" in Africa.

Another Democratic presidential candidate, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, has tried to prohibit funding for the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), the successor to the KLA now being protected by U.N. troops as a result of the outcome of the conflict. Kucinich said an internal United Nations Report found the KPC responsible for violence, extortion, murder and torture.

After the war, Milosevic was ousted and put on trial, where he has been making the case in his own defense that Serb troops in Kosovo were fighting Muslim terrorists associated with bin Laden. At a hearing before the U.N. court trying him, he brandished an FBI document concerning al Qaeda-backed Muslim fighters in Kosovo.

The FBI document was a congressional statement by J. T. Caruso, the Acting Assistant Director of the CounterTerrorism Division of the FBI, who cited a terrorism problem in Albania, the base for the Muslim terrorists that attacked Serbia forces in Kosovo.

Clark’s presidential decision suggests that he believes the media will not ask him about supporting the same extremist Muslim forces in Kosovo that militarily attacked us on 9/11. He’s right: during interviews on ABC’s Good Morning America and the NBC Today show on September 17, the subject didn’t come up. Clark did say that he would not have gone to war with Iraq, and that he would have turned the matter over to the U.N. There was no "imminent threat" from Iraq, he claimed.

So where was the "imminent threat" to the U.S. from Yugoslavia? And why did the Clinton administration bypass the U.N. on that illegal war? Clark is counting on not hearing those questions from the same media going after Bush on Iraq. They are all worse than hypocrites.

Wesley Clark: A Clinton by Another Name?

By Lowell Ponte - FrontPageMagazine.com 09/17/03

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY HAS “TWO STARS,” Senator Hillary Clinton of New York and retired four-star General Wesley Clark. This is what former President Bill Clinton, according to the New York Times, told a gathering of big campaign donors in Chappaqua in early September.

General Clark now says he will announce his candidacy for President near his home in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Wednesday, September 17. At his side, reports Fox News Channel, will be the co-chair of his campaign, former First Lady of Arkansas and the United States Hillary Clinton, although the Clark campaign now says they may have “misunderstood” the freshman senator from New York..

These “two stars” could become the 2004 Democratic “dream ticket,” if they can agree who should be on top and who on the bottom. Both were born in Illinois and moved to Arkansas, but their star-crossed paths would be very different.

Hillary Clinton began as a “Goldwater Girl” who at first followed her father’s Republican inclinations. The 1960s at Wellesley College and Yale Law School radicalized her. Hillary Rodham became an activist supporter of the Black Panthers, a law intern in the office of the attorneys for the Communist Party USA, and the young bride of an aspiring politician in the one-party Democratic State of Arkansas.

Wesley Clark was taken to Arkansas at age five after the death of his father. He would attend West Point, graduating first in his class in 1966. He then attended Oxford University in England as a Rhodes Scholar, like Bill Clinton. But where Clinton womanized and led anti-war demonstrations in Europe against the United States, Clark studied and earned a Masters Degree.

While America was rocked by anti-war and anti-military demonstrations during the 1960s, Clark served in Vietnam, where he was wounded in combat and earned both Bronze and Silver Stars. His military career bridges 34 years, including service as commander of all U.S. forces in Latin America and NATO Europe, as well as command of the Serbia-Kosovo conflict.

In keeping with the apolitical traditions of our military, Clark, 58, did not decide he was, or register as, a member of the Democratic Party until August 2003.

But analysts calculate that the moment he announces his candidacy, Clark will rank among the top five out of 10 prominent Democrats seeking the Presidency. A Southerner, he will vault past Senators such as Bob Graham of Florida and John Edwards of North Carolina, both of whom will thus see their hopes of being the traditional Southern “ticket-balancers” for northern candidates dashed.

If Clark enters the race, a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll found, he would likely immediately peel off two points from the 15 percent of Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO), two points from the 13 of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, one point from the 12 of Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and three points from the 11 percent support of Senator John Forbes Kerry (D-MA), the one other Democrat running as a decorated Vietnam War veteran. This would deflate more than a quarter of Kerry’s support, dealing what could be a fatal blow to his flagging campaign. Clark would enter the race with nine percent support.

“I’ve got some heavy artillery that can come in. I’ve got good logistics, and I’ve got strategic mobility,” said Clark to Newsweek Magazine, using metaphors sure to appeal to antiwar peacenik Democrats.

In fact he does appear to be supported by much of the Clintons’ political war machine. Among those flocking to his campaign are Clinton veteran gutter fighters Mark Fabiani, Bruce Lindsey, Bill Oldaker, Vanessa Weaver, George Bruno, Skip Rutherford, Peter Knight, Ron Klain and perhaps even former Clinton deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes, among others.

The Clintons’ sock puppet installed by them to head the Democratic National Committee, Terry McAuliffe, had already ordered an extra podium for General Clark for the scheduled September 25 New York City debate among Democratic presidential aspirants.

In addition to Hillary as his campaign co-chair, the General’s Draft Clark for President 2004 organization reportedly already has 166 professional coordinators in all 50 states.

The Clinton “orchestration” behind Clark’s campaign is so apparent that commentators are already speculating whether General Clark is running for himself – or as a stalking horse for Hillary and/or as a puppet for Bill. Is all this being arranged to knock down rivals and clear the way for a Clinton-Clark “C-C Rider” ticket in 2004?

The Achilles Heel for Democrats has been their widely-perceived weakness on national defense and national security issues. President Bill Clinton tried to remedy this with strange military interventions, from Haiti to Kosovo. (He likewise tried to remedy the Democrats’ perceived soft-on-crime image with his symbolic “100,000 cops” campaign and support for the death penalty.)

Having a General Wesley Clark on the 2004 ticket to cover Democratic shortcomings could help conceal this weakness. Indeed, hard-core Lefties such as Michael Moore become almost orgasmic when they envision a debate between General Clark and Texas Air National Guard veteran President George W. Bush. “I know,” writes Moore, “who the winner is going to be.”

But those like Moore might be going off halfcocked with such enthusiasm for a host of reasons.

As this column documented almost three weeks ago, General Wesley Clark “is a very peculiar man with facets to his personality, behavior and history that will seem creepy and frightening to people of both the Right and Left. To know him is not to love him.”

While commanding NATO troops in defense of Muslim Kosovo and against Serbian Christians, for example, the hotheaded Clark commanded a subordinate British General to attack Russian troops that had landed without NATO permission at the airport in Kosovo’s capital. (Clark speaks fluent Russian but chose not even to talk with the Russian troops before attacking them.)

The British General Sir Mike Jackson reportedly refused Clark’s risky orders, saying: “I’m not going to start the Third World War for you!”

Others who interviewed Gen. Clark in Kosovo were shocked by his casual talk about how he would launch military strikes against Hungary if it tried to send fuel to the Christian Serbians, or against Russian ships if they entered the war zone.

Gen. Clark in the Balkans also pursued policies that increased civilian casualties, such as deliberate bombing from high altitude and his policy to cut off fuel, food and energy from the civilians of Belgrade in wintertime. Clark also cozied up to at least one man accused of war crimes and ethnic cleansing, Bosnian commander Ratko Mladic.

“How,” investigative reporter Robert Novak quotes one diplomat as saying of Wesley Clark, “could they let a man with such a lack of judgment be (Supreme Allied Commander of Europe)?”

Do antiwar, peace-activist supporters of Howard Dean really want this kind of twitchy-fingered militarist hothead a heartbeat away from the nuclear button? Would they really want a Commander-in-Chief Wesley Clark?

Clark’s incompetence, disregard for human life, dishonesty and criticism of Clinton policies cost him his command. President Clinton and Defense Secretary William Cohen removed Clark months ahead of schedule.

But this did not alter the special bond between Clark and the Clintons that began in 1993, and that is evident today in their effort to control his presidential campaign.

What the national media are not telling you, of course, is that General Clark’s ascent to military four-stardom was itself a political act orchestrated by the Clintons.

This might have been motivated by gratitude, an emotion the Clintons scarcely ever feel for those of their servants they routinely betray. More likely it was satisfaction to find a high-ranking military man who would serve them with more loyalty than he showed to his oath or to the Constitution or to the military that the Clintons loathe (and that in turn loathes them).

This was, after all, the Clinton era, in which officers in U.S. Marines commando training were given mysterious questionnaires asking if they would obey a command to shoot American citizens who disobeyed a law that required them to disarm. By a similar method, Communist China selected the elite troops who could be trusted to gun down 1989 student protestors at Tiananmen Square.

In 1993 Wesley Clark, after a solid-but-not-stellar military career, was commanding the 1st Cavalry Division at a sweaty 339-square-mile base in Texas called Fort Hood. On a late winter day his office got a call from Democratic Texas Governor Ann Richards (later defeated and replaced by George W. Bush).

The Governor had an urgent matter to discuss. Crazies about 40 miles north of Fort Hood in Waco, Texas, had killed Federal agents, she said. If newly sworn-in President Bill Clinton signed a waiver setting aside the Posse Commitatus Act, which generally prohibits our military from using its arms against American citizens inside our borders, could Fort Hood supply tanks, men, and equipment to deal with the wackos at Waco?

Wesley Clark’s command at Fort Hood “lent” 17 pieces of armor and 15 active service personnel under his command to the Waco Branch Davidian operation. Whether Clark himself helped direct the assault on the Davidian church using this military force at Waco has not been documented, but it certainly came from his command with his approval.

Eighty-two men, women, children and babies – including two babies “fire aborted” as their mothers’ bodies writhed in the flames of that Clinton holocaust – died from the attack using military equipment from Clark’s command.

“Planning for this final assault involved a meeting between Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno and two military officers,” this column reported, “who developed the tactical plan used but who have never been identified. Some evidence and analysis suggests that Wesley Clark was one of these two who devised what happened at Waco.”

“Clark is more Clinton than Eisenhower,” writes Matthew Continetti of the Weekly Standard. His career advanced via politics, not the battlefield.

After Waco, Clark in April 1994 was promoted to Director of Strategic Plans and Policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon, which meant he could see and consult with the Clintons easily. Soon thereafter he was promoted to Commander of all U.S. Latin American Forces, and a year thereafter to the ultimate title of SACEUR, commander of all the NATO forces in Europe, a position Clark would hold until he retired in May 2000.

Even Clark’s vaunted fourth star as a general was unearned, according to Robert Novak. It was twice rejected as undeserved by Pentagon brass, but then was awarded by his patron Bill Clinton after Clark begged the President for it.

“Clark,” wrote Novak, “is the perfect model of a 1990s political four-star general.” The Clintons love him. The troops he has commanded, by contrast, call him the “Ultimate Perfumed Prince.”

But his promotion to a four-star general, and now to a Presidential candidate, must have involved more than Clark’s slavish obedience to the Clintons and their agenda, and more than his background as a fellow Little Rocker Arkansan. The Clintons, as their use of private detectives and secret police attests, like to use people they can blackmail – people over whom they hold some dark secret as a threat.

Perhaps General Wesley Clark was more intimately and directly involved in the deaths at Waco than anybody has reported. Perhaps he has some other secret shame or disgrace. For whatever reason, the Clintons seem confident that they have him under their complete control.

This megalomaniacal, manipulative couple would not be advancing the candidacy of General Wesley Clark unless they were sure that they control him – and that his candidacy will serve their own selfish interests.

Having read this column, please take a moment to re-read my August 25 previous investigation into General Wesley Clark. Can you imagine any decent American, right-wing or left-wing, voting for such a person?

Here's the August 25th article:

Wesley Clark: General Issues

By Lowell Ponte - FrontPageMagazine.com 08/25/03

"THE GUY MUST HAVE A BEDROOM AT CNN,” my wife would joke. It seemed true, because at every hour of the day or night during the Iraq War, retired General Wesley K. Clark could be seen on the Cable News Network as a “military expert” criticizing the Bush Administration.

A quick victory in Iraq “was not going to happen,” he told viewers on March 25, shortly before the quickest blitzkrieg victory of its size in military history occurred. But his words doubtless brought comfort to the fans of a network slanted so far to the Left that the most asked question about its name is whether the “C” in CNN stands for Clinton, Castro or Communist News Network.

Expected to announce this week whether he will seek the Democratic Party’s 2004 Presidential nomination (most likely to position himself for its Vice Presidential slot), Clark disgusted the veteran host of CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Report.”

Dobbs banished Clark from his show because, as Mark Mazzetti and Paul Bedard of U.S. News & World Report reported, “the former NATO boss seemed to push his own political agenda rather than provide the straight military skinny.”

CNN nowadays is owned by AOL-Time-Warner, an entity that has already manufactured at least one President. An obscure Southerner whose wealth and land were handed down from slave-owning ancestors, Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter was boosted to national stature by not one or two but FOUR cover stories in Time Magazine.

By beaming General Clark’s face into America’s psyche 24 hours a day like a never-ending Clark infomercial, this media conglomerate’s CNN arm clearly aimed to make the 58-year-old boy raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, its next liberal puppet in the White House.

With Clark’s announcement days away, CNN has toned down its propaganda effort. (Or perhaps CNN has been reminded that when General Clark commanded NATO forces during the Kosovo conflict, he reportedly targeted the CNN bureau in Belgrade.)

“It’s interesting that a man who is not even a registered Democrat is being drafted by voters of a Democratic Party which already has nine candidates, including five sitting Senators and a former governor,” a Republican Party official told the London Telegraph. “What does that say about the desperation of the Democrats, even at this early stage?”

What it means, General Clark told the Telegraph, is that Democrats “have an enormous hunger for leadership. I think the Draft Clark movement is evidence that this hunger is still out there, despite the number of candidates in the race.” The purportedly-independent “Draft Clark” campaign has already raised $550,000 for its non-candidate.

What this political party – generally perceived as weak on national security issues and patriotism in the midst of our War on Terrorism – desperately needs is a fig leaf to conceal its shortcomings.

The Democratic Party has not seriously courted a General for its ticket since 1952, when World War II Supreme Allied Commander Dwight David Eisenhower chose instead to seek the White House as a Republican. (General Colin Powell was already a Republican and had denied any Oval Office aspirations by the time Democrats hinted that he might be considered for a place on their national ticket.)

But would the inclusion of General Clark be enough to create a winning Democratic ticket in 2004? No, not if the American people learn who and what Wesley Clark really is.

Clark is a very peculiar man with facets to his personality, behavior and history that will seem creepy and frightening to people of both the Right and the Left. To know him is not to love him.

So here’s an introduction to what you need to know about General Wesley K. Clark.

Born December 23, 1944, he spent most of his childhood in Little Rock, raised by his mother Veneta and stepfather Victor Clark. Only during his twenties, he says, did Wesley discover that the father who died suddenly of a heart attack at age 51 when he was five was Jewish – and that his own middle name Kanne was that of his father Benjamin Jacob Kanne.

[Another Democratic Presidential hopeful, Roman Catholic Sen. John Forbes Kerry of Massachusetts, recently told voters that his ancestry was not Irish, as voters had been misled to believe, but was Jewish. Including Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D.-Conn.), Democrats thus could field three ancestrally “Jewish” candidates for President.]

(Wesley’s grandfather’s name had been Jacob Nemerovsky when he fled from Russian pogroms in the 1890s to Switzerland, where he obtained a false passport with the family name Kanne with which he immigrated to the United States.)

General Wesley Clark speaks fluent Russian and could become the first American President to do so. Why he has not boasted of this in campaigning for Leftist Democratic support is a mystery.

His father Benjamin was an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney in Chicago, a Fourth Ward candidate for office, and a local Democratic activist. After his death, Wesley’s mother and her son – like Hillary Clinton – moved from Illinois to Arkansas.

Wesley was raised a Southern Baptist, not a Jew, after that move. But after graduating first in his class from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1966 and studies in England, Wesley commanded a mechanized infantry company in Vietnam, was wounded four times but was awarded one Purple Heart, and won the Silver Star and two Bronze Stars. While in Vietnam he converted to Roman Catholicism.

Like Bill Clinton, Wesley was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. While Clinton spent his time in sexual dalliances (and one alleged rape) and leading anti-American demonstrations in Europe and visiting the Kremlin in the dead of winter by special invitation, Clark was more studious. In August 1968 he emerged with a Master’s Degree in philosophy, politics and economics.

The Rhodes Scholarships had been set up by British imperialist Cecil Rhodes to educate the brightest American youngsters in England, a once-secret codicil in his will made clear, so that they would go home and help bring America back under the political sway of the British Empire.

Wesley Clark’s career in the U.S. military was solid but not stellar. It included a variety of backwater assignments as well as one high point, White House Fellow 1975-76. Until Waco.

As Leftist journalists Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair noted, the ruthless tactics and attitude on display at Waco are strikingly similar to those Clark has used on other battlefields in his career.

Odd, isn’t it, that the Leftist establishment press has told you nothing about the connection between General Wesley Clark and Waco – or what happened to him immediately after the service he rendered the Clintons at Waco?

Immediately after Waco, Wesley Clark’s flat career began an incredible meteoric rise.

In April 1994 he was promoted to Director of Strategic Plans and Policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In June 1996 Clark was named Commander in Chief of the U.S. Southern Command in Panama and put in charge of most U.S. forces in all of Latin America and the Caribbean.

In June 1997 President Clinton appointed him Commander in Chief of the United States European Command and SACEUR, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, in command of the forces of NATO, a position Clark would hold until May 2000.

As SACEUR General Wesley Clark would collect a truckload of honors. He would also prosecute Clinton’s war siding with Muslim Kosovars against Serbian Christians in the Balkans.

This war was largely fought from high altitude aircraft to minimize American casualties, an approach that increased civilian casualties on the ground. Clark soon acquired a reputation as someone who lied about such casualties, lies reported even by Time Magazine.

Democrats who support Howard Dean or Dennis Kucinich for their anti-war stance should know that when Russians landed and took over one provincial airport in the region, General Clark commanded British forces to attack the Russians. British General Sir Mike Jackson reportedly refused, saying: “I’m not going to start the Third World War for you!”

Would peacenik Democrats really want General Wesley Clark, with a reputation for brutal and erratic behavior, one of those behind the events at Waco, to be only a heartbeat away from having his finger on the nuclear button? If he were Vice President, how safe would a liberal President be from attacks by fanatic former combat veterans? Can you take the risk of electing General Clark as your Vice President?

And then there is the underside of the Clark family with its faint whiff of disreputability. His son Wesley Clark, Jr., exaggerated his Hollywood credentials (he apparently worked briefly with Danny DeVito’s production company) to get a lucrative contract from the Bosnian government to make an epic film about the siege of Sarajevo.

Much money was funneled into Wesley, Jr.’s, bank account for that film, but little of quality was produced. The situation apparently never quite crossed the line into clear illegality – like former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s son admitting that he drove the getaway car in a burglary. But the Bosnian government at the very least got badly shortchanged by Clark’s misrepresentation. Like father, like son?

“Known by those who’ve served with him as the ‘Ultimate Perfumed Prince,’” writes veteran military combat soldier and journalist Col. David Hackworth about Gen. Wesley Clark, “he’s far more comfortable in a drawing room discussing political theories than hunkering down in the trenches where bullets fly and soldiers die.”

Clark’s nickname among soldiers under his command reportedly was “the Supreme Being.” And that was when Clark was only a general or even lower-ranking officer. What would he expect us to call him if he became Commander-in-Chief?

If he announces his formal candidacy this week, we should all begin reading Wesley Clark’s 2001 book Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat. America should get ready for many more Wacos, many more lies, and megatons of megalomania – all of this fully endorsed and praised by Bill and Hillary Clinton, the power patrons who made General Wesley Clark what he is today.

Perhaps even CNN soon will start calling itself the Clark News Network.

Clark Tries to Start WW3

On June 12, 1999, a convoy of armored personnel carriers carrying 200 Russian soldiers crossed over from Bosnia, where the troops had been part of the peacekeeping force there, into Kosovo. The convoy quickly moved in to the capital Pristina and moved to secure the airport.

Just three days earlier, Russia had played a critical role in ending the conflict by forcing their Serb allies to sign a military technical agreement that effectively called for the withdrawal of Serb military and police forces from Kosovo.

The war was finally over. But the Serb civilians who remained in Kosovo were understandably nervous, worried that they had been abandoned and left to the mercy of the militant Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). When the Serb residents saw the Russian soldiers, fellow Orthodox Christians and longtime political allies, they were relieved and welcomed them with open arms.

Although it came as a surprise to NATO military commanders, the Russian troop movement—in the bigger picture—would serve to reassure the Serb residents of Kosovo and help implement the peace agreement.

But the war wasn’t over for Wesley Clark. Furious at the Russian move, he ordered British paratroopers to storm the airport. British General Sir Mike Jackson refused the order. "I'm not going to start the third world war for you," Jackson is reported to have told Clark.

Even after the Russians took full control of the airport, Clark planned to order British tanks to block the airport’s runways to prevent Russian aircraft from landing. Once again, the Brits refused.

A senior Russian officer later revealed that thousands of Russian troops were poised to be flown in to Pristina within two hours of any trouble.

Brit General stops Wes Clark 'from starting WWIII'

BBC News 09 March, 2000

Details of Russia's surprise occupation of Pristina airport at the end of the Kosovo war are revealed in a new BBC documentary on the conflict.

For the first time, the key players in the tense confrontation between Nato and Russian troops talk about the stand-off which jeopardised the entire peacekeeping mission.

The Russians, who played a crucial role in persuading Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to end the war, had expected to police their own sector of Kosovo, independent of Nato.

When they did not get it, they felt double-crossed.

As Nato's K-For peacekeepers prepared to enter the province on 12 June, they discovered the Russians had got there first.

A contingent of 200 troops, stationed in Bosnia, was already rolling towards Pristina airport.

'Third World War'

General Wesley Clark, Nato's supreme commander, immediately ordered 500 British and French paratroopers to be put on standby to occupy the airport.

''I called the [Nato] Secretary General [Javier Solana] and told him what the circumstances were,'' General Clark tells the BBC programme Moral Combat: Nato at War.

''He talked about what the risks were and what might happen if the Russian's got there first, and he said: 'Of course you have to get to the airport'.

General Jackson: Backed by UK Government ''I said: 'Do you consider I have the authority to do so?' He said: 'Of course you do, you have transfer of authority'.''

But General Clark's plan was blocked by General Sir Mike Jackson, K-For's British commander.

"I'm not going to start the Third World War for you," he reportedly told General Clark during one heated exchange.

General Jackson tells the BBC: ''We were [looking at] a possibility....of confrontation with the Russian contingent which seemed to me probably not the right way to start off a relationship with Russians who were going to become part of my command.''

Russian plans

The Russian advance party took the airport unopposed. The world watched nervously.

A senior Russian officer, General Leonid Ivashev, tells the BBC how the Russians had plans to fly in thousands of troops.

''Let's just say that we had several airbases ready. We had battalions of paratroopers ready to leave within two hours,'' he said.

Amid fears that Russian aircraft were heading for Pristina, General Clark planned to order British tanks and armoured cars to block the runways to prevent any transport planes from landing.

General Clark said he believed it was ''an appropriate course of action''. But the plan was again vetoed by Britain.

Partition fears

Instead, he asked neighbouring countries, including Hungary and Romania not to allow Russian aircraft to overfly their territory.

Russians are not under direct Nato command During the stand-off, Moscow insisted its troops would be answerable only to its own commanders.

Nato refused to accept this, predicting it would lead to the partition of Kosovo into an ethnic Albanian south and a Serbian north.

A deal on the deployment of Russian peacekeepers was reached in early July.

The Russians now operate as part of K-For in sectors controlled by Nato states, but are not directly under Nato's command.

MEET THE PRESS
Sunday, June 15, 2003

MR. RUSSERT: And we are back.
General Clark, welcome to MEET THE PRESS.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Thank you, Tim.
MR. RUSSERT: The Middle East: Should Israel listen to George Bush and show more restraint?
GEN. CLARK: Well, I think they can show some restraint. But the problem is when you have hard intelligence that you’re about to be struck, it’s the responsibility of a government to take action against that intelligence and prevent the loss of lives. It’s what any society would expect of its leadership. So there’s a limit to how much restraint can be shown.
MR. RUSSERT: What can the president do now...
GEN. CLARK: I...
MR. RUSSERT: ...to bring about peace?
GEN. CLARK: I think what we’ve got to do is bring more of the neighboring countries’ leadership in more strongly. You know, in the case in Europe when we were dealing with the problems in Yugoslavia, we set up the contact group. The contact group had the United States and it had the European Union; it had Russia. And Russia at the time, frankly, was very supportive of the Serbs. They represented the Serbs’ views in these meetings. And what we need in the Middle East, I believe, is something stronger
than the current informal bilateral relationships that work on the periphery of the struggle. I think you need a Middle East contact group, because I think peace in the region is in the interests of all the countries in the region.
MR. RUSSERT: Who should be involved?
GEN. CLARK: And we need to lead that.
MR. RUSSERT: Which countries?
GEN. CLARK: I think, certainly, it’s Jordan. I think it’s Egypt. I think it’s clearly Saudi Arabia. Now, when you come to Syria and Iran, that’s where you have difficulties, and it’s a question of how you’re going to engage those countries. Can they be engaged or must they be confronted, or is there some combination that’s involved? And I think we’ve got to work our way through that. I think there’s got to be a process put in place to work our way through that.
MR. RUSSERT: You’re a strong proponent of NATO. Would you consider recommending putting NATO troops in the occupied territories to help bring about security and peace?
GEN. CLARK: Well, at some point, yes. At some point, there may be a time to do that, but I think one of the things we’ve seen most clearly in 10 years of experience with this is you have to have a mandate first. You have to have legitimacy first. You have to have a mission first. You have to deal with the political situation first before you put the troops in. The NATO troops are going to be no more effective at stopping terrorist attacks than the Israeli troops are. In fact, they’re going to be less effective. They’re not from the area. They don’t have the experience, they don’t have the intelligence connections.
And so simply putting another presence in there by itself doesn’t solve it. You’ve got to get at the political problems first. So you’ve got to have something that’s more concrete than the road map, something that you can use outside pressure, more details and move this process forward, but at some point, NATO certainly.
MR. RUSSERT: Should the United States position in terms of Iran be regime change?
GEN. CLARK: I think that’s a dangerous position to take right now. I think we’re really between confrontation and engagement on this. And we’ve tried a little bit of both. The policy we followed with respect to Eastern Europe was extraordinarily successful. It was a prolonged period of engagement. And, eventually, the ideas win out. And I think that’s what’s going to happen in Iran, too. The question is: How much engagement can we properly have? And I think we ought to be looking at that and pushing in that direction.
MR. RUSSERT: Would you consider, however, military action to remove the nuclear threat from Iran?
GEN. CLARK: Well, I first would consider a really strong and improved inspection regime that would go in and follow the leads and really work the inspections. I think the problem with military action in all of these cases is that it should be a last resort, because when you take military action, you have a lot of consequences that can’t be foreseen. And if the goal is to go after the weapons, then let’s go after the weapons the most direct way and that’s by inspections and pressure and visibility. You always have the military card behind at the end and that’s very clear but not the first card to be played.
MR. RUSSERT: Take North Korea where they won’t allow inspectors in, and if we wake up six months from now, North Korea has four or five more nuclear bombs, what do we do?
GEN. CLARK: Well, I think the red line’s already been crossed in North Korea, to be honest. That red line was crossed while we were engaged with Iraq. And North Koreans have told us, and I don’t have any information that would contradict this, that they’ve begun reprocessing the plutonium and that it’s mostly completed in the reprocessing. This was what we tried to prevent starting in 1994, and we had it frozen for several years. But if they’ve moved it, if it’s reprocessed, if it’s out in the system, then what it mean is that even a pre-emptive strike on that facility won’t necessarily get the nuclear material, and you have to live with the consequences of that.
So that red line looks to me like that’s been crossed while we were engaged in Iraq. Now, the question is, “OK. So they’ve got the nuclear materials. What can you do now?” Well, you’re going to try to contain and isolate the regime. You’re going to increase the inspections of North Korean assets coming into countries like Japan. You’re going to encourage China to get tougher. You’re going to try to toughen up South Korea. You’re going to try to build relationships. You’re going to stop ships at sea. The next move will be up to the North Koreans. But what they’ve shown is that they are not always rational by our standards. They’re a paranoid regime. They do use force. They do take lessons from what we do, and so they’re somewhat unpredictable.
MR. RUSSERT: But we cannot allow them to sell or transport nuclear bombs.
GEN. CLARK: That’s correct. The question is: Can we physically prevent that?
MR. RUSSERT: Can we?
GEN. CLARK: Can we? I don’t know. My guess is it’ll be more difficult than we think.
MR. RUSSERT: And so what happens? We live with the consequences?
GEN. CLARK: Well, I think there’s a possibility that the nuclear genie is out and will be out, and that’s why I’ve been so concerned about the North Korean problem for a long time.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to Iraq. Since the president declared the war had been, in fact, won on May 1, we are still losing more than one American soldier every day. How do you see the situation in Iraq this morning?
GEN. CLARK: Well, I think there are three levels to be looked at. The first level is organized resistance. There is organized resistance in some parts of Iraq. And the U.S. forces over there have to deal with that organized resistance. They have got a big operation under way. It will produce some results. It will also make a lot of enemies, and it will make make some mistakes. And that’s the way military operations are. But that organized resistance right now is only regional. It’s localized. It seems to be mostly Ba’athist, and perhaps some foreign fighters, who have come in and worked with them. That might be manageable.
Second level is—superficially things seem to be getting much better. In Baghdad, there’s much less looting. People I talked to there, and who have been over there and are reporting, say, “Look, you’re not getting the right impression from the press. Things are a lot better. I mean, life is going on for the majority of the people.” But that takes me to the third level. Back to my Vietnam experience. For a lot of people in Vietnam, during the war, life pretty much went on. They still had to buy food, they had to buy gasoline, their families—you know, the children grew up and got married and so forth. Life goes on.
The third level is the level that we are not seeing here. It’s what’s really happening inside the Iraqi culture. Where are the Shiites heading? Who is influencing the Shiites? Are the Iranians going to be able to take over this movement and make it an anti-American movement? Is there so much Iraqi nationalism that they are going to come to us and tell us to leave? What about the Kurds? What’s really going on with Saddam Hussein behind the scenes, and the Sunnis and their connections with al-Qaeda, if any? So there are a lot of things at the third level that we should be very concerned about. And that third level is the—it’s the level of which we don’t hear very much in the press.
MR. RUSSERT: Were we properly prepared for the peace, for the reconstruction?
GEN. CLARK: Well, I think the answer is obviously—it’s obvious we weren’t. We weren’t.
MR. RUSSERT: Why?
GEN. CLARK: I don’t know. There’s a variety of possible explanations on this. I was concerned from the outset when I talked to people on the inside that they had done a lot of thinking about how to fight a war. They hadn’t done their homework in terms of what happens next. I got various indications. They said, “Look, we got to focus on the war first.” Some people said, “We don’t want to talk about what happens next.” I think there were some assumptions that we would be more warmly welcomed than perhaps we were in some cases. I think there was an inclination to say that if you get overly focused on what happens next, you are going to lose sight of the real problem. The problem is weapons of mass destruction. The problem is keeping the American people’s attention focused so you can do this.
So I think that, for a lot of different reasons, the postwar planning, and the postwar effort, didn’t receive the priority that many of us felt that it should have.
MR. RUSSERT: How long will we be in Iraq?
GEN. CLARK: Several years. But I think the extent of it is uncertain.
MR. RUSSERT: What kind of force level?
GEN. CLARK: Well, I think it depends really on what happens down at the third level and how much anti-Americanism there is. At some point, if all of the Iraqi people rise up, and there are hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in the streets, saying, “Please leave. Thanks a lot for getting rid of Saddam, but please leave,” I think it will be very hard for the United States to stay. My guess is that the situation will be more ambiguous than that. There’s a power struggle that will emerge inside Iraq between the continuing leadership groups. And we’ll be there. We’ll be trying to sort that out. We’ll have other reasons to be in the region. Several years, maybe—we’d like to get the numbers down to 75,000 troops or less. It’s not clear if that can be done. Let’s see the results of this operation and of the one afterwards over the summer.
Right now the United States Army is about 70 percent committed between Afghanistan, Iraq, the remnants of that’s in the Balkans. And we’ve got another 10 percent in Korea. So, I mean, there’s not a lot of flex right here for the United States Army. They’re the people on the ground. I know there’s every effort being made to reduce that force. But the simple fact is as long as there’s a threat over there, you can’t reduce the force. So I think we’re going to be there in a substantial number for a long time.
MR. RUSSERT: Can we have true security in Iraq as long as Saddam Hussein stays unknown?
GEN. CLARK: No. No. I was one of those before the war who said, “Don’t focus on Saddam Hussein. Go in there, take over the government and you’ll take care of things.” About halfway through when I saw the strength of the Fedayeen, then I realized that this was personal, and if we didn’t focus on Saddam Hussein, we didn’t eliminate the head of the government, that we wouldn’t create the sense of security that’s necessary to move ahead. So I think getting Saddam Hussein is very important.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you think he’s still alive?
GEN. CLARK: Yes, I do.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the weapons of mass destruction and refer you to a column you wrote in the Times of London on April 9th, and I’ll show it to you and our viewers as well. “This is the real intelligence battle and the stakes could not be higher, for failure to find the weapons could prove to be a crushing blow to the proponents of the war [in Iraq], supercharge Arab anger and set back many efforts to end the remarkable diplomatic isolation of the United States and Britain.”
Where are the weapons of mass destruction?
GEN. CLARK: I think there are some mass destruction capabilities that are still inside Iraq. I think there’s some weapons that have been shipped over the border to Syria. But I don’t think we’re going to find that their capabilities provided the imminent threat that many feared in this country. So I think it’s going to be a tough search, but I think there’s stuff there.
MR. RUSSERT: Was there an intelligence failure? Was the intelligence hyped, as Senator Joe Biden said? Was the president misled, or did he mislead the American people?
GEN. CLARK: Well, several things. First of all, all of us in the community who read intelligence believe that Saddam wanted these capabilities and he had some. We struck very hard in December of ’98, did everything we knew, all of his facilities. I think it was an effective set of strikes. Tony Zinni commanded that, called Operation Desert Fox, and I think that set them back a long ways. But we never believed that that was the end of the problem. I think there was a certain amount of hype in the intelligence, and I think the information that’s come out thus far does indicate that there was a sort of selective reading of the intelligence in the sense of sort of building a case.
MR. RUSSERT: Hyped by whom?
GEN. CLARK: Well, I...
MR. RUSSERT: The CIA, or the president or vice president? Secretary of Defense, who?
GEN. CLARK: I think it was an effort to convince the American people to do something, and I think there was an immediate determination right after 9/11 that Saddam Hussein was one of the keys to winning the war on terror. Whether it was the need just to strike out or whether he was a linchpin in this, there was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001 starting immediately after 9/11 to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein.
MR. RUSSERT: By who? Who did that?
GEN. CLARK: Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, “You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.” I said, “But—I’m willing to say it but what’s your evidence?” And I never got any evidence. And these were people who had—Middle East think tanks and people like this and it was a lot of pressure to connect this and there were a lot of assumptions made. But I never personally saw the evidence and
didn’t talk to anybody who had the evidence to make that connection.
MR. RUSSERT: We now know that—and Condoleezza Rice on this program last week, acknowledged that the president said something in the State of the Union message which was untrue, about uranium being shipped from Africa to Iraq. Something like that found its way into the State of the Union message and delivered to the world by the president of the United States. Should there now be open hearings by the Senate Intelligence Committee into this matter?
GEN. CLARK: Well, I don’t know if the hearings ought to be open or not because you’re dealing with classified information. But I do think this. I do think there has to be an accounting for this. I think really it goes back to 9/11. We’ve got a set of hearings that need to be conducted to look at what happened that caused 9/11. That really hasn’t been done yet. You know, a basic principle of military operations is you conduct an after-action review. When the action’s over you bring people together. The commander, the subordinates, the staff members. You ask yourself what happened, why, and how do we fix it the next time? As far as I know, this has never been done about the essential failure at 9/11. Then moving beyond that, it needs to be looked at in terms of the whole intelligence effort and how it’s connected to the policy effort. And these are matters that probably cannot be aired fully in public but I think that the American people and their representatives have to be involved in this. This is essential in terms of the legitimacy and trust in our elected leadership and our way of government.
MR. RUSSERT: The president said that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat based on the intelligence data he had seen. Did the president mislead the country?
GEN. CLARK: Well, I think that’s to be determined. And there were many of us who said, “Where is the imminence of the threat?” We never saw the—I got people calling me up and they would say, “Well, now, look, don’t you think the president might know something you don’t know?” And I certainly hoped he did. But it was never revealed what the imminence of the threat was. And I think now that the operation’s over, it’s been successful, I think we do need to go back and look at this issue. But as I say, I’m not sure it can all be done in public.
MR. RUSSERT: Tom DeLay, the Republican leader in the House, has been very critical of you and others, and this is the way he put it in his words: “Blow-dried Napoleons that come on television and in some cases have their own agendas. ...General Clark is one of them that is running for president.”
GEN. CLARK: Well, it’s a funny thing. You know, I mean, one of the greatest charges you can make against someone is, “Don’t listen to him because he has presidential aspirations.” And that’s unfortunate. I think it’s a real mark against where we are in our political culture that if someone is—can be damned by saying that he has some kind of a hidden agenda. The simple truth is on this that I’ve tried to call the military side of it as accurately as I could, based on my own 34 years of experience in the military.
I was involved in preparing the doctrine, the forces. I led one of these operations. So I think I understand it. Furthermore, I have not been a candidate. I have not run. I have not taken any money. I have not been affiliated with a party. I wanted to see what was happening with the war and where the country is going. And so I didn’t do that. I know what Tom DeLay has said. But, you know, the simple truth is that a lot of people have come up to me afterwards; they’ve said, “Thanks a lot for, you know, being on television and saying what you said. I listened to it. It made sense.” And that’s as much as I could do.
MR. RUSSERT: Would you like to be president?
GEN. CLARK: Well, in many respects, I’d like a chance to help this country. And I don’t know if that means being president or doing something else. But I’ve spent my entire life in public service, except for the last three years. And it’s very hard not to think in terms of the welfare of the country, and when you see the country in trouble, in challenge, yes, you’d like to pitch in and help.
MR. RUSSERT: Are you considering entering the presidential race?
GEN. CLARK: I’m going to have to consider it.
MR. RUSSERT: By when?
GEN. CLARK: Well, sometime over the next couple of months.
MR. RUSSERT: And your time line is by September...
GEN. CLARK: I don’t have a specific time line, Tim. But I do have to consider it.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you two Web sites that have been developed, and I’ll put them on the screen for you. There they are. www.DraftWesleyClark.com. And now in New Hampshire, there is this radio ad. Let’s listen:
(Audiotape, radio ad):
Announcer: General Wesley Clark: Vietnam combat veteran, Rhodes scholar, four-star general, business leader, and with your support—the next president of the United States. Paid for by DraftWesleyClark.com.
(End audiotape)
GEN. CLARK: That’s amazing.
MR. RUSSERT: Do up want them to continue those advertisements?
GEN. CLARK: Well, you know, all I’ve—I don’t have anything to do with that group. And I’m enormously impressed by their energy and so forth. I’m going have to give some serious consideration to this. And I’ve been—I’ve been saying that this is really about ideas and trying to get the ideas out. And I’ve been very grateful for the opportunity to do that. Maybe there’s something more to it.
MR. RUSSERT: You have voted in Arkansas in the Democratic primaries.
GEN. CLARK: I did.
MR. RUSSERT: So if you did run for president, you would run as a Democrat?
GEN. CLARK: Well, I haven’t said that. I haven’t made any official moves. But this is a two-party country. There’s no successful third party bids. And, you know, it’s just—that’s the way it is. And I am concerned about many things in the country, not only foreign policy but domestic as well.
MR. RUSSERT: So you would run as a Democrat?
GEN. CLARK: Well, I haven’t come out and said that point blank. I mean, I think that’s another step that would have to be taken.
MR. RUSSERT: But you wouldn’t challenge George Bush in the Republican primaries?
GEN. CLARK: I haven’t considered that, no.
MR. RUSSERT: So it would be in the Democratic primary?
GEN. CLARK: You’re leading the witness here. I mean, that’s a step that I’ll have to work through along with everything else. You know, I’ve been non-partisan. I’ve got—I’m a centrist on most of these issues, and I’ve got people after me from both sides of the aisle. That are—a lot of Republicans have talked to me and they’ve said, “Look, we’re very concerned about where the country is. We’re moving into—not only have we done a war that’s essentially an elective war that’s put us in trouble afterwards, in an indefinite commitment”—and by the way I don’t hear—they don’t hear the strong voices out there about mission creep and exit strategy that dominated the 1990s dialogue. But a lot of Republicans have come to me and said, you know, “What does this mean?” And they’ve said, “On the other hand, we always believed that we should be the party of fiscal responsibility. And where are we going with the tax cuts? What does this mean for the future of the country?” So I’m getting, you know, interest from both sides, really...
MR. RUSSERT: What do you...
GEN. CLARK: ...and just haven’t moved past that.
MR. RUSSERT: What do you think of the Bush tax cuts? Would you have voted for them?
GEN. CLARK: Well, I would not have supported them, no.
MR. RUSSERT: Why not?
GEN. CLARK: Well, first of all, they were not efficient in terms of stimulating the kind of demand we need to move the economy back into a recovery mode, a strong recovery and a recovery that provides jobs. There are more effective ways of using the resources. Secondly, the tax cuts weren’t fair. I mean, the people that need the money and deserve the money are the people who are paying less, not the people who are paying more. I thought this country was founded on a principle of progressive taxation. In other words, it’s not only that the more you make, the more you give, but proportionately more because when you don’t have very much money, you need to spend it on the necessities of life. When you have more money, you have room for the luxuries and you should—one of the luxuries and one of the privileges we enjoy is living in this great country.
So I think that the tax cuts were unfair. And, finally, I mean, you look at the long-run health of the country and the size of the deficit that we’ve incurred and a substantial part of that deficit is result of the tax cuts. You have to ask: “Is this wise, long-run policy?” I think the answer is no.
MR. RUSSERT: As president, would you rescind them?
GEN. CLARK: You have to look at each part of them, but there are—you’ve got to put the country back on a fiscally sound basis, whether that is in suspending parts that haven’t been implemented or rescinding parts, that’d have to be looked at.
MR. RUSSERT: They’d say, “Candidate Clark is for raising taxes.”
GEN. CLARK: Well, you know, I think that what candidate Clark, if there is such a candidate, would be for is he would be for doing the right thing for government. You know, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld put it this way when he was talking about how long to stay in Iraq. He said, “We’re going to get out as soon as possible, but we’re going to stay as long as necessary.” Well, it’s more than a clever formulation. It’s the right formulation. I think it’s the same thing about taxes. Taxes are something that you want to have as little of as possible, but you need as much revenue as necessary to meet people’s needs for services. The American people on the one hand don’t like taxes. None of us do, but on the other hand, we expect the government to do certain things for us.
MR. RUSSERT: The attorney general of the United States, John Ashcroft, wants to expand the Patriot Act which would give him more powers in terms of apprehending terrorists, identifying people who are giving “material support.” Would you support that effort?
GEN. CLARK: Well, not without a thorough review of where we are right now with the current Patriot Act. I think one of the risks you have in this operation is that you’re giving up some of the essentials of what it is in America to have justice, liberty and the rule of law. I think you’ve got to be very, very careful when you abridge those rights to prosecute the war on terrorists. So I think that needs to be carefully looked at.
MR. RUSSERT: You and other former generals filed an amicus brief in support of the University of Michigan’s affirmative action plan.
GEN. CLARK: Right.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you in part what the University of Michigan plan is. They award points to an applicant. If you get a 3.0-grade-point average you get 60 points. If have alumni or legacy parents, 4 points. A perfect S.A.T., 12 points. Athlete, 20 points. If you’re a minority, just for being black or Hispanic, you get 20 points. Many people say that’s not color blind. That is reverse discrimination. What’s your response?
GEN. CLARK: Well, I’m in favor of the principle of affirmative action. Whether that’s the right plan or not, and whether that should be 10 points, not 20 points, whether it should be, let’s say, an income level cutoff there at which you don’t get the points if you’re above a certain income, you can tool with the plan. But what you can’t have is you can’t have a society in which we’re not acknowledging that there is a problem in this society with racial discrimination. There is, there has been and the reason so many of us filed this brief is we saw the benefits of affirmative action in the United States armed forces. It was essential in restoring the integrity and the effectiveness of the armed forces.
MR. RUSSERT: In the brief you talked about combating discrimination. Many people would point to the military’s policy on gays as being discriminatory. Are you in favor of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the military?
GEN. CLARK: I’m not sure that I’d be in favor of that policy. I supported that policy. That was a policy that was given. I don’t think it works. It works better in some circumstances than it does in others. But essentially we’ve got a lot of gay people in the armed forces, always have had, always will have. And I think that, you know, we should welcome people that want to serve. But we also have to maintain consistent standards of discipline; we have to have effective units. So I think that’s an issue that the leaders in the armed forces are going to have to work with and resolve.
I do think that the sort of temperature of the issue has changed over the decade. People were much more irate about this issue in the early ’90s than I found in the late ’90s, for whatever reason, younger people coming in. It just didn’t seem to be the same emotional hot button issue by ’98, ’99, that it had been in ’92, ’93.
MR. RUSSERT: So you have no problem having openly gay Americans serve in the military as long as they abided by the same code of conduct that heterosexuals abided by?
GEN. CLARK: Well, the British have a system that—they put this in the British system. They call it— they said, “Don’t ask, don’t misbehave.” I think the leaders in the armed forces will look at that some day. But I have to tell you, also, we have got a lot of other issues on the plate for the United States armed forces, and this is one among many. And the men and women charged with those responsibilities need to look at those issues. But this is only one issue.
MR. RUSSERT: But it’s an important one to many Americans. Parameters, which is a journal published by the U.S. Army War College Quarterly, has an article by Professor Aaron Belkan of the University of California. He says that 24 countries now have gays in the military, most of our NATO partners. Would you allow American troops to serve in joint exercises with NATO partners that had gays in the military?
GEN. CLARK: They already are. And they servd together in Kosovo and in Bosnia and so forth.
MR. RUSSERT: That being the point, should the United States not allow openly gay people to serve in the military?
GEN. CLARK: Well, I think we need to charge the men and women responsible for the armed forces to come forward with that answer. I think that has to come from them based on what we need for the armed forces, as well as, you know, their concerns about society as a whole.
MR. RUSSERT: But you’d look at changing the policy?
GEN. CLARK: Absolutely.
MR. RUSSERT: When you left your command, there was an article in The Washington Post on—in July of 1999, which I want to talk about and give you a chance to talk about it. And here it is on the screen.
“General Clark to Leave Top Post at NATO. After months of tension with the Pentagon over the conduct of NATO’s war against Yugoslavia, Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark was abruptly informed that his term as the alliance’s top commander will end...the decision to end Clark’s term a few months short of three years was unusual, and some military officials said it may be seen by his congressional supporters and among European allies as an affront to the general who led NATO to victory. ...Informed of the decision less than an hour before a reporter called seeking his response, Clark later issued a statement accepting the change...”
Why were you asked to step down?
GEN. CLARK: Well, the honest answer is I don’t know. And I never really asked. I was given a number of reasons. I don’t know. It’s one of those things when it happens, it happens. You know, you work for the president and the secretary of Defense and when—I was told that was the decision, that was the decision.
MR. RUSSERT: Was it a performance issue?
GEN. CLARK: Not to my knowledge.
MR. RUSSERT: And you’re not the least bit curious?
GEN. CLARK: Yeah, I have been curious, Tim. It hurt. But, you know, you just have to move past things like that in your life. I mean, one of my staff members finally, you know, asked somebody months later, “Why did you do that? Why did do you that?” He asked somebody on somebody else’s staff. And everybody had a little bit different explanation. And I don’t know if you even went to those people today and said, “Why did you do that?,” I don’t know if there’s a reason for it. It was a feeling. I was put in a position—I was working in two chains of command. One was a NATO chain, where I was getting instructions from the State Department and White House through the NATO secretary-general in my duty as NATO commander. Another was through the U.S. military chain. And it was the sort of familiar Pentagon, State Department and White House rivalry.
The Pentagon saw the operation in Kosovo as a secondary issue. It’s, like, you know, we’ve got a lot of problems, we’re preparing for two major regional conflicts, we’re trying to get a supplemental appropriation, we need money, we’re working on this. Don’t bother us with more problems from Europe. I mean, this is something we don’t have to deal with, whereas the White House saw it as, and the State Department saw it as, and NATO saw it as, “This is make or break for the alliance. If the alliance doesn’t grip this successfully, the alliance is discredited. You must successful in Bosnia. And if you allow what’s happening in Kosovo to happen, you’re going to cause the alliance to fail.”
So I was caught in the middle. I had to do what was right. That’s why when you have a title like supreme allied commander, you realize there’s no one else that can quite see it that way. I’d go back to the Pentagon and try to explain it to people. I’d say, “Look, I’ve got the British three star on the ground, I’ve got 10,000 troops there in Serb artillery range, if they attack into Macedonia,” and from the Pentagon I’d get—from top leaders, they’d say, “Really? I mean, we didn’t know this. I mean, we’re not—we’re just worried about, you know, what if Senator Stevens, or the Appropriations Committee doesn’t support our supplemental?” And so I’m not saying that they were negligent, it’s just differences in perspective.
And what you would hope is that the chain of command is strong enough that people are respected enough, as individuals and as leaders, that they can bring their differences in perspective forward, that you can resolve these things without getting them entrapped in personal relationships. For whatever reason, in this case, it didn’t work. And that’s what happened.
MR. RUSSERT: Before you go, would you accept the vice presidency if offered?
GEN. CLARK: Well, I haven’t moved into considerations of things like that, Tim.
MR. RUSSERT: But you’re...
GEN. CLARK: Right now I’m really happy that I’ve had an opportunity to talk. I speak a lot around the country. I’ve got another book under way called “Winning Modern War.” I’m going to talk about Iraq and terrorism and where we are going, and our foreign policy. I’m enjoying a business career, and I’m going to seriously consider what happens. But you’re asking me too far ahead here.
MR. RUSSERT: Well, if you decide to run for president, I hope you come back and talk about the issues some more.
GEN. CLARK: Thank you.

Afterwards, outside the studios at the traditional stakeout microphone for Sunday show guests:

Reporter: General Clark, do you have a moment to stop at the stakeout cameras?
Clark: Is it okay if I don't?
Reporter: When you're on the Sunday shows, there is an understanding that there is a stake out camera outside every place you're at.
Clark: Can I make a quick call?
Reporter: Sure.
Clark: Gail, there is a stakeout camera here as I'm leaving NBC and they want me to answer questions. No? No questions. Okay, okay, got it.

Wesley Clark on the issues:

Taxes: "The Bush tax cuts weren't fair. The people that need the money and deserve the money are the people who are paying less, not the people who are paying more. I thought this country was founded on a principle of progressive taxation. In other words, it's not only that the more you make, the more you give, but proportionately more because when you don't have very much money, you need to spend it on the necessities of life."

Guns: Clark has implied that gun ownership is primarily a local issue. He also believes that assault weapons should be banned for the general public, stating, "people who like assault weapons they should join the United States Army, we have them." (CNN's Crossfire, 06/25/03)

This is frightfully similar to the following quotes:

"Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA - ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State." --Heinrich Himmler

"...Clark thought he had Slobodan Milosevic figured out, and that the mere threat of NATO bombing - and perhaps a day or two of the real thing - would bring him to the negotiating table and force him to be reasonable. When this turned out not to be the case, Clark had no Plan B, because President Clinton had ruled out ground troops from the outset.
So, NATO continued with a limp air campaign that was inadequate to stopping Milosevic's ethnic-cleansing campaign, that appalled other members of the military brass who thought Clark had helped drag the U.S. into a near-fiasco, and that led to such ill-feeling toward Clark in the Pentagon that he was fired at war's end, launching his career as a TV pundit..."

General Clark is also licensed as an investment banker. He joined Stephens Inc. as a consultant in July of 2000 and was named Managing Director - Merchant Banking of Stephens Group, Inc. from March 2001 through February 2003.

Stephens Inc. is the largest bond house off Wall Street, bigger than any in Chicago or Los Angeles or Dallas, and one of the top commodities traders in the nation. Stephens took Tyson Foods and a number of other business giants public, for example, and continues to influence their operations.

In 1992, when the Clinton campaign was knocked to its knees by the first allegations of the candidate's draft-dodging and womanizing, a Stephens subsidiary advanced him over $3 million to save his campaign. This advance was identical to the sum the Stephens organization got in a sweetheart deal it had manipulated with the Clinton-controlled Arkansas Student Loan Fund just a few months earlier.

Stephens Inc. is a Rose Law Firm Client.

Two Indonesian billionaires come to Arkansas. Mochtar Riady and Liem Sioe Liong are close to Suharto. Riady is looking for an American bank to buy. Finds Jackson Stephens with whom he forms Stephens Finance. Stephens will broker the arrival of BCCI to this country and steer BCCI's founder, Hassan Abedi, to Bert Lance.
Riady's teen-age son is taken on as an intern by Stephens Inc. He later says he was "sponsored" by Bill Clinton.

Hillary Clinton joins the Rose Law Firm.
Apparently because of pressure from Indonesia, Riady withdraws his bid to buy Lance's 30% share of the National Bank of Georgia. Instead, a BCCI front man buys the shares and Abedi moves to secretly take over Financial General - later First American Bankshares -- later the subject of the only BCCI-connected scandal to be prosecuted in the US.

Army Can't Explain How Gen. Clark Got Kosovo Campaign Medal Waiver

By Jon R. Anderson, Stars and Stripes 06/16/01

The Army is at a loss to explain who granted a waiver awarding retired Gen. Wesley Clark the Kosovo Campaign Medal.

After four months of repeated queries, Army officials say they’re still not sure who approved the medal.

Privately, officials say, they believe former Defense Secretary William Cohen approved the award, but have been unable to find the requisite "paper trail" for such awards to make sure.

Cohen was not available for comment Friday.

One senior Pentagon official speculated Clark may have been given the medal "as a memento or token" without actually being "awarded" the campaign ribbon.

The Army says no way.

"Nowhere in the military do we hand out awards as mementos," said Col. Stephanie Hoehne, Clark’s former aide and now a top Army spokeswoman.

"They are earned and they are awarded. When your boss pins an award on your chest, that’s ‘being awarded.’"

Citing how paperwork sometimes gets misplaced or forgotten after verbal approval for an award is given, Hoehne said, "I’m not surprised it didn’t make it into his records, if that’s the case."

That he needed a waiver at all has been a sticky issue for top officials who have been wrestling for more than a year with how to fix controversial criteria for the medal that has left thousands of troops who directly supported the 1999 air campaign unrecognized.

Under rules for the medal established by the Pentagon, only those who served in and around the Balkans are eligible for the decoration.

Servicemembers must have served at least 30 consecutive days in the combat zone or 60 non-consecutive days traveling in and out of it.

With Clark directing the 78-day air campaign mostly from his headquarters in Mons, Belgium, he and his staff — not to mention thousands of troops supporting the effort from bases throughout Europe and the United States — were left ineligible.

According to European Command officials, Clark clearly did not meet the criteria and they were surprised to learn he had been awarded the medal last year.

In fact, Clark received the very first of the newly minted medals during his retirement ceremony June 23, 2000, presided over by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki.