Clark on FOX news 12/28...full transcript and video links.

David Asman: Fox News military analyst, retired Four-Star Army General Wesley Clark. He is a former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and a former Presidential candidate.

You got it all, General.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: (laughs) Thanks.

David Asman: Based on what we now know, you know, the President says, "Yes we should have gone to war, despite the WMD problem.. What do you say?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Oh, I say no. Look, the real urgency behind this was that Saddam was supposedly going to develop a nuclear weapon that could threaten America. And that was what Vice-President Cheney hyped. That's what Condie Rice hyped. And it simply wasn't borne out by the facts. Now, the rest of the arguments in there, the only other substantial argument was the connection with Al Qaeda, and the evidence has shown there, as The Chicago Tribune article admits, that there really wasn't any causative link. Saddam had nothing to do with Al Qaeda.

Yes, there'd been some intelligence contacts, relatively low level. Most of the governments in the Middle East probably had those contacts with someone from Al Qaeda. And the real, the real push to go to war was the nuclear argument, and that nuclear argument was false.

David Asman: Well, one thing that's pointed out, not only by Chicago Tribune, but also by the Dulfer Report, which I'm sure you've, you've read over is that through the Oil For Food Program, which he was syphoning off billions of dollars for his own use, he was attempting to rebuild his arsenal, such as it was. If we had left him in power, do you have any fears that perhaps he might have ginned up a nuclear program?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think what we would've had to do is continue to contain him, and we would've needed to sharpen up the instruments of containment, but we could have done this.

David Asman: But he wasn't, he wasn't letting in the inspectors so that we, we didn't really know what he had, which is why we made some of our mistakes.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, actually he did let in the inspectors under the threat, and we did have inspectors in there, and we could have continued to tighten the noose on Saddam. You know at the time I recall, as you do David I'm sure, there were- people were saying, 'You can't keep 40,000 troops in Kuwait indefinitely. Well, what's going to happen to those troops in Kuwait?' Well, now we've had 130,000, 140,000 troops for over two years in Iraq. So in retrospect, we could have used military pressure to encircle Saddam, to have kept the inspectors in there, to have hobbled his ability to reconstruct his force, and we could have kept international support on our side and put much more effort against Al Qaeda.

David Asman: Well, I don't wanna, I don't wanna beat a dead horse here, but the question of inspectors is important one. If he had, because he was, he was drawing the line on certain aspects of the whole inspection issue. If he had thrown open the doors and said 'inspectors come on in,' it would have been a different matter, but he didn't do that. Why do you think he was so reticent about letting the inspectors go in wherever they wanted to go?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I don't presume to understand all of Saddam's motivations.

David Asman: (laughs) I don't blame you.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: But I'll tell you one thing that you have to do is, you have to be able to get political good, political power out of your military leverage. And we were doing that at the time. We did it in December and January of 2002, 2003. And in fact if you read the, all of the writings about the administration, the administration's greatest fears were, 'Hey, what if the inspection program just keeps going, and what if the inspectors don't find anything-

David Asman: Mm hm.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: then how are we going to justify the invasion?'<

David Asman: And all the UN res- the 17 UN resolutions, etc.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Right. And how are we then going to justify the invasion? So, I think what happened is, the administration kind of put the cart before the horse. They knew what, what remedy they wanted, and they started down a process that was okay, but then they had to sort of had to jump ahead in order to justify the invasion.

David Asman: But how long should we have waited? I mean, you know, it wasn't absolutely a sure thing, according to you, that we would've needed to go in, but how many more UN resolutions and how many more attempts to kick out inspectors would we have to have gone through?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: It might take some time, but look, is it- we spent over 200 billion dollars there. We've had over 2,000 Americans die. We've got our Armed Forces deeply engaged. So what if we took two years? If there was no threat to the United States that we couldn't deal with.

David Asman: Mm

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: if there wasn't any way of- if there wasn't anything he could do to hurt us, why not keep him in a vice.

David Asman: Well, that's, that's- the problem is of course, it's impossible to prove what could or could not have happened. There's no way of, of anybody saying that he, what he could have done under his cloaks that he had developed. But the final point I want to get to that The Chicago Tribune mentions, is the spreading of a virus, if you will, in a positive sense, the virus of Democracy. And as imperfect and all the problems that Iraq has, there is a development of a democracy of sorts there. And some people, even Wally Jumblat, who's the, the Lebanese, who was very skeptical about the Iraqi war at first, he said and I think we can put it up there, he said, "I was cynical about Iraq, but when I saw the Iraqi people voting it was the start of a new era of world. The Berlin Wall," he put it, "has fallen." Do you agree with him?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think there's two points to be made here. First, we don't have to debate what Saddam could've done. We know, in fact, what the truth was, that he did not have the programs that were used to justify the US invasion. So, there was hype in it, and the invasion was, by the administrations logic, unnecessary.

David Asman: But the falling, the so called falling, if you will, of the Berlin Wall in the Arab world, has that happened in Iraq?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well you know, there've been voting and elections in the Arab world for a long time.

David Asman: Well, yeah, but not like, not anything like this. Not anywhere close, right?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, we'll have to see what really happens, because what you have right now is a Shia, Shiite majority that, as I wrote in my New York Times opinion piece back in early December, the real challenge is that Iran is coming in, under the guise of Democracy. We have to really continue to work this problem. Wouldn't it be a tragedy if, under the guise of Democracy, we ended up with an Iranian theocratic state on the Persian Gulf that was allied with Iran while Iran's trying to get nuclear weapons? So, I'm all in favor of Democracy. I think it's wonderful if we can achieve it, but it remains to be determined how effective we're going to be

David Asman: Right.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: in achieving that in Iraq.

David Asman: Well, certainly, certainly a lot of things could go wrong, no question about it, but again we don't want to ignore what goes right either. General Wesley Clark, we've got to leave it at that. Good to see you, sir. Thanks for coming in.

http://www.securingamerica.com/

11-17-03?

What a humdinger. Right up there with Galloway vs. coleman

Yeah, sure, he kept touting the GOPher talking points, but he was at least polite to General Smackdown this time.

;)

...the weapons inspectors left just prior to the invasion, fearing "shock and awe.". THey were all over Iraq INCLUDING the presidential palaces that had been previously off limits.

Geeze, Clarkie, get your facts straight and stop allowing these blowhards their false talking points.

What part of, "Well, actually he did let in the inspectors under the threat, and we did have inspectors in there..." don't you understand?

David Asman: Well, I don't wanna, I don't wanna beat a dead horse here, but the question of inspectors is important one. If he had, because he was, he was drawing the line on certain aspects of the whole inspection issue. If he had thrown open the doors and said 'inspectors come on in,' it would have been a different matter, but he didn't do that. Why do you think he was so reticent about letting the inspectors go in wherever they wanted to go?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I don't presume to understand all of Saddam's motivations.

David Asman: (laughs) I don't blame you.

The net exchange leaves the viewer with the impression that Saddam wasn't cooperating. Clark has the facts on his side yet lets Asman wiggle out. He should have shoved this crap right up Asman's ass, informing the public that they are being intentionally lied to about Saddam's compliance by Bush/Fox shills.

The cooperation increased just weeks before the invasion after five months of inspections. Why would Clark waste time arguing such a point? Technically what Asman asks is based on fact. Rather than argue about the last few weeks, Clark makes the point that Bushco moved before the inspectors could succeed.

Why would Clark waste time arguing such a point?

Because it is critical to the run-up to the invasion, and the rationale for expediency. It is a favorite Bushie talking point. Bush himself repeats it ad nauseum. And it isn't true. When the inspectors left, they had the run of the place. They left because they feared getting caught in the crossfire.

They reported that cooperation had not gotten better until just weeks before their withdrawal. To argue that point would trivialize the point that Bushco was going in immediately to negate the possibility that the inspectors would succeed. You are dealing with an audience that lives on sound bites. To argue about a couple of weeks out of five months of inspection would not allow time to point out that Bushco was avoiding the inspections. That is a point that he made well. Clark has learned the use of time to get his message across. When he first started he was criticized for getting bogged down in details and nuance. He has learned to brush aside the trivial to get the message out. This was not a debate, it was a chance to show his analytical abilities.Asman was correct for the most part, Saddam had resisted inspections and was giving in gradually. If he had opened up fully from the beginning, Bushco's true plan would have been more obvious. Go read the inspector's reports.

He has a limited time to make his own talking points. I think his response goes further.
Snip>GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: But I'll tell you one thing that you have to do is, you have to be able to get political good, political power out of your military leverage. And we were doing that at the time. We did it in December and January of 2002, 2003. And in fact if you read the, all of the writings about the administration, the administration's greatest fears were, 'Hey, what if the inspection program just keeps going, and what if the inspectors don't find anything-<snip
He makes the most important point, the administration did not want the inspections to work.

We've been there for two years and lost thousands of American and coalition lives and many tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, and will have spent, by the time this is over, hundreds of billions of dollars (funny how "hundreds of billions of dollars" is so easy to say yet so hard to comprehend... it's just too hard to fathom what could have been done with that money). So what was the big rush to get in there instead of letting the inspectors do their work? What, exactly, would have been lost by waiting? Who knows--but we can sure tell what wouldn't have been.

It was one of the main arguments for immediate action that we could not wait with troops in the desert, while the true reason is that the public would have found out what we have actually found out since. For Bushco it was now or probably never.

I don't know whether this was an official reason given by the administration, but news reporters were saying that a reason for hurrying up with the invasion was that the temperatures of the Iraq summer would make fighting incredibly difficult for the troops and that we had to get in and out before the weather got hot. :eyes: Too bad the administration didn't plan for anything more difficult than being greeted with flowers etc and now our troops will be stuck there through many summers anyway.

" Well you know, there've been voting and elections in the Arab world for a long time."

We talk about elections as if we just pulled them out of the cave into civilization. When in fact they had them before, maybe even less fraudulent than the US sponsored ones.

:woohoo:

:patriot:

You just gotta love this man!

i've found that reading these transcripts is so infuriating. the unbridled propaganda is more evident when one separates oneself from it for a little bit.

Clark really shouldn't even be arguing these points any more. He should just say "it is obvious that Iraq was a complete mistake, and that the Vice-president profited from it and that's why it's never going to end. next question?"