TSWL - A Wesley Clark Blog

So far I only have two issues on which I disagree with WKC. The other is the Israeli fence,which I'm not prepared to discuss for lack of research. But the free-speech pov seems to support Limbaugh over his ESPN gaffe. How weird is it, that his drug habits have come to light at the same time? Well, to paraphrase a certain gubernatorial candidate, "I can admire Rush as a public speaker without subscribing to his opinions."

Bill Maher said: Rush Limbaugh had to resign from his ESPN NFL broadcasting job for suggesting his fellow sportscasters overrated Philadelphia quarterback Donovan McNabb because they wanted to see a black quarterback succeed. Limbaugh also didn't help himself when he outted McNabb's wife as a CIA operative.

But, this time, Rush Limbaugh isn't the big, fat idiot. He wasn't implying that we'd all be better off if society were segregated, as Trent Lott did, or that blacks don't possess the "necesseties" to be baseball managers, as Al Campanis did. He was simply suggesting that some sportscasters, recognizing a historic glass ceiling for African-American quarterbacks, may have been practicing a kind of "accolades affirmative action."

But, as we all know, in this country, when anybody makes anyone uncomfortable ever, they must lose their job. Sports Center is next.

Backstory to Wes' failure to register as a Democrat is Arkansas specific, as it should be. WKC has a strong states-rights position that will resonate with those Republicans who remain adherents to local rule, as they seem to be in CA.

It isn’t unusual that Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark didn’t list a political affiliation when he registered to vote. Only 4.4 percent of Arkansas’ 1.5 million voters have declared a political party, according to Janet Miller, the secretary of state’s deputy for elections. "Voter registration by party affiliation is an optional choice, and we have found that a very, very small number of registered voters declare," Miller said. "And if you do declare, it isn’t binding. They just ask you which ballot you want when you show up at the polls."

Clark’s Democratic rivals have attacked the retired general’s party credentials since he entered the race Sept. 17. "A piece of paper doesn’t make you a Democrat," said Kym Spell, Clark’s press secretary. "Wesley Clark is a real Democrat, and this is simply a tactic that the other guys are using to distract Americans from the real issues."

A balanced view of the general's conduct of the Kosovo war provides objective and first-hand evidence to refute claims that Clark's misguided intransigence brought about his dismissal.

You can tell a lot about a politician by the way he handles a crisis. . . It is no secret that General Clark's relationship with the Pentagon was strained during that [Kosovo] conflict. . . But it is worth taking a step back and taking a fuller look at General Clark's record. The larger story is this: General Clark believed the stakes were so high for NATO that the alliance needed to be prepared to confront Mr. Milosevic militarily.

. . . NATO's military campaign was not perfect by any means. But the general's judgment on those critical issues seems pretty solid when viewed in perspective: a humanitarian wrong was righted and NATO won its first and only war.

So far, General Clark appears to embody a Democratic vision of what a military man should be — a cerebral West Point graduate who believes that building the United States' military might is just one of the nation's priorities; a multilateralist respectful of the United Nations; and pro-active on humanitarian intervention.

Since General Clark announced his intention to run for the presidency last month, a number of partial and even misleading accounts of the war have emerged. Some have suggested that his strained relationship with the Pentagon reflects badly on his skills as a leader. What is often overlooked in these accounts is that important issues were at stake in deciding whether and how to go to war.

"There was giant resistance from the Pentagon to deepening the commitment to the Balkans," General Clark told me in a 2001 interview. He said the Balkans had not figured in "the Pentagon view of its national military strategy, which is to prepare to fight in the Persian Gulf and in Korea, and that short of that, the maximum amount should be spent on the procurement account."

I'm hoping that WKC will continue to emphasize that the military is about people, planning, and coalitions more than it is about technology.

It was important for NATO to take a stand in the Balkans and foolish for the alliance to go to war with one hand tied behind its back. Conventional air power had never previously won a war single-handedly and there was no guarantee that it would succeed in Kosovo in a reasonable time frame. General Clark's insistence on preparing a ground option was sound military doctrine.

Not for nothing was Wes Director of Strategy for the Joint Chiefs.

Another notion about General Clark's record is that he was reckless when he proposed occupying the Pristina airfield in Kosovo after the war to preclude the Russians from rushing in troops. . . General Clark's recommendation was not rash; it was a judgment call that had been discussed in detail in Washington and that was initially supported at senior levels of the American government.

One lingering question about General Clark's résumé is why his NATO tour came to an abrupt end in 2000. . . "Our belief at the White House was that General Clark had effectively led NATO forces to victory in Kosovo," Samuel R. Berger, Mr. Clinton's national security adviser, told me this week. "What we understood we were approving, after the war, was a succession, not a termination."

The Kosovo campaign had its flaws. There was too much wishful thinking among allied officials at the outset that a few days of bombing would do the job. . . But the record also indicates that the general had very difficult questions to contend with and that his judgment on some of the crucial issues was sound.

Quote of the day from WKC:

"This administration is trying to do something that ought to be politically impossible to do in a democracy, and that is to govern against the will of the majority," he said. "That requires twisted facts, silence, secrecy, and very poor lighting. That's why you need night-vision goggles to see what's going on over there."

It's been clear to me that since WKC declared, few mainstream journalists have found the time to read any of his extensive newspaper columns, let alone his first book. The right of course is exhuming home videos of old speeches and gleefully conflating Clark's polite acknowledgement of the present Bush team with sincere praise of the first President Bush and Reagan (thanks to the Wall Street Journal for webbing the entire speech, an often touching fly-over of WKC's military career). Clark's writings provide positions aplenty, with more consistency than some of his spoken remarks, backed up by a consistent vision of how our military might, used correctly, can enhance our legitimate mission as the world's principle exporter of democracy.

Slate's Fred Kaplan is less than taken with Clark as a literary stylist, but suggests it will be too bad if the general's newest book is ignored because "once the book gets going, it's as searing an indictment of George W. Bush's foreign policy as any tome out there."

Clark notes, says Kaplan, "that even Donald Rumsfeld's vision of military 'transformation'—the precision-strike weapons and air-ground coordination that led to such a rapid battlefield victory—'was not a new vision' but rather 'the product of five U.S. presidents' and a 'process that actually accelerated after the 1991 Gulf War,' i.e., (though Clark doesn't say so explicitly) after the Democrats swept Bush's father out of the White House. This supports Al Franken's description of the victorious U.S. armed forces as "Clinton's military."

"At this point," Kaplan goes on, "Clark finds his bearings, homes in on his targets (Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, the whole lot of them), and blasts them to bits with the precision of an F-16 dropping JDAM smart bombs on a squadron of Republican Guards."

By Page 183: The general is in carpet-bombing mode. The end of the Cold War, he writes, created an opportunity for the United States to resolve some nasty contradictions in its foreign policy, to strengthen alliances without having to prop up dictators for anti-communism's sake. "But 2001," he intones, clearly referring to the election of W., "marked a profound departure in U.S. foreign policy." Then he blasts Bush's "aggressive unilateralism," which would "hamper counterterror efforts," turn an effective alliance system "upside down," prompt "an outburst of worldwide anti-American sentiment," and leave our country "poorer, more isolated, and less secure."

Kaplan concludes, there is much evidence that Clark's endorsement of a foreign policy based on shoring up alliances and seeking the legitimacy of international institutions is authentic and long-standing. Clark, after all, was U.S. supreme allied commander, Europe, and, in that post, coordinated NATO's 1999 bombing campaign over Kosovo. In his 2001 book, Waging Modern War, he details the frustrations of fighting a war through an alliance—the endless squabbles over tactics, strategy, even which targets to strike. Yet the result—the success of a unified alliance—brought "significant strategic benefits" beyond mere military victory, benefits, he wrote at the time, "that future political and military leaders must recognize." His earlier book concluded: "Shared risks, shared burdens, shared benefits"—it's not only a good motto for NATO, it's also a good prescription for America's role in the world.

Given the mess that Bush has made for himself, it might also be a good campaign slogan for Gen. Clark.

Yesterday, Wesley Clark came to DC to make the rounds on Capitol Hill.

I got the opportunity to interview him during the car ride from Dulles Airport back to Washington.

So yesterday morning I grabbed an airport shuttle out to Dulles, waited for Clark to arrive, hopped in the car, and the following was the result ...

(We'll be posting a PDF version of the interview later this afternoon.)

TPM: Well let's start with--there's obviously a tradition in the officer corps of generals -- all officers -- having an apolitical stance when they're in the service. But people who vote in primary elections are very political people. Obviously you were in the Army for 34 years and you said that you were non-partisan during that time and then you came out and started thinking about your views and so forth. I think, again, for people who vote in primaries, that's a little hard to understand: You know, how can you be a man in your fifties and have put aside politics in that way? So how do you explain that? Again, for people who have really lived politics for most of their life and think about it a lot.

CLARK: I think it's a wonderful thing that people have dedicated their lives to politics because without that we wouldn't have a democracy. In our country, political parties perform an essential function. But for people in the military it's very hard to participate in party politics because you're always on the move and you don't have the time, the energy, the opportunities -- deployments and night maneuvers and so forth would screw up anybody. Sometimes some of the wives have been involved. But generally the men couldn't be. And there's also the Hatch Act, which says that you can't participate in uniform. So you can give money to a party or to a candidate, if you want, as an officer, but you can't do anything that indicates an official endorsement by people in uniform for someone in a political race.

It's a good thing. Because we don't want our military involved in partisan politics. Our military should be loyal to the commander-in-chief no matter who he is, no matter what party. Their job is to raise the professional military issues, and the big policy decisions ultimately have to be made by the people's elected representatives or their appointed representatives. That's civilian control of the military. It's the essence of democracy.

The old military tradition was that people in the armed forces didn't vote at all. Guys like George C. Marshall, they made a passion of not voting. The reason is, they said, "It's really up to the people, the electorate, to choose the president. I'll work for whoever, I don't want to get involved in trying to pick sides. Whoever the president is, I support him."

In the 1950s it became acceptable and expected -- well I shouldn't say expected because no one ever knew -- but acceptable to vote. And there were efforts made to make sure that soldiers got to vote through absentee ballots. We know after Florida that a lot of these ballots probably were never counted. There's no telling whether they were ever counted, and in most races they probably weren't. For me, I had served under a Republican president as a White House fellow. I was in the Office of Management and Budget--

TPM: This was President Ford?

CLARK: Ford. And I knew Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld -- I didn't know them personally or well; I was 30 years old and they were very important people. I was just a sort of special assistant to the director of OMB. But I knew him, and Paul O'Neill and other people, and respected them. Then I worked around with the Clinton administration when I was the J5 on the Joint Staff. I knew people there, high level officials, and respected them. And when I got out, I went into business and obviously I voted.

I voted for Al Gore in the election of 2000. I had voted for Bill Clinton previously. For me, the issue was: make sure before you pick a party -- you don't have to pick a party in Arkansas to vote, you just vote, and I voted in the Democratic primary, but that didn't mean becoming a member of the Democratic party. Before you pick a party, make sure you know why you're picking a party. Make sure you understand what the partisan political process is in America. What does it commit you to? What does it mean? How does it affect the rest of your life? What is it all about? And so I thought I'd take a look at both parties.

I was fortunate. I was well-enough known that both parties invited me to consider them. The Republican party invited me to participate in a fundraiser and run for Congress. The Democratic party invited me to be their nominee for governor of the state of Arkansas. I was tremendously honored by that. And it was clear as I looked at the parties, looked at the culture, watched the dialogue, it wasn't just that I had voted for Al Gore, I really believed in what the Democratic party stood for. And so when it came time to choose a political party, I chose the Democratic party.

TPM: Obviously, President Bush has been in office for more than two years, and a lot of Democrats, at least, think he's governed in a very ideological, very conservative way. A lot of the divisions among Democrats have been pushed aside because there's unity created by being in the opposition--sort of a beleaguered opposition, some would say. But those differences are still there in the Democratic party, and they would certainly come to the fore with another Democratic president. You have -- just the most obvious one -- in the '90s, Clinton who had a more New Democrat, pro-free trade, fiscal discipline message; the people in congress were more traditional Democrats, more leaning to the left. So, especially since your experience is more on the foreign policy side, which advisors are you listening to? Who are you gravitating towards in the context of the Democratic party?

CLARK: I read books and I listen to a lot of different people who talk to me. Laura Tyson's been a friend. She's helped me. On the policy team with me now are guys like Ron Klain. These are people who've got a lot of experience, they've seen a lot of issues go by. Gene Sperling, Bob Rubin have participated. Some of the former speechwriters have helped me.

But when you run it all through, it's really me. It's my views that have been shaped by a lifetime of public service, traveling across this country, putting a child through school, worried about how much--or how little--money I made, how to survive on very middle [income] wages while moving every two or three years. The wife would come in and say, "Ah, the towels don't match the bathroom and you've got to buy new bathroom mats. And now what are we going to do for curtains? The curtain rods don't fit in this kind of the house." You know, all these expenses of moving on top of not making very much money. It's just a question of who you are.

I have strong views. I have strong feelings about what's right and what's wrong in the way of policy. I taught economics at West Point, I taught political philosophy. I worked in the South Bronx in 1966 for three or four weeks in the neighborhood youth corps as part of the Johnson administration's anti-poverty program. So I had seen urban poverty. I worked as a counselor at the Little Rock Boys' Club back in the late '50s, early '60s, ended my last staff member position at the Little Rock Boys' Club in 1965, meeting kids from not the most affluent backgrounds. You get a certain feeling for America. And that's the feeling for the America I know. That's the America I want to-you know, I want to give everyone in America equal opportunity, including those people that are like I grew up with.

TPM: There are all sorts of critiques about the present administration's domestic policies. What's the central one? What's the central problem, the central flaw in this administration's domestic policy?

CLARK: There's an underlying ideological drive that overrides pragmatism. The American people want government to fix the things they can't fix themselves. The American people are basically individualists. They like each other; they're very charitable and generous; they're bound together in a hundred different ways -- they're not a big-government country. They're not socialists. But they recognize there are things they can't fix, like healthcare, or education--public education.

And this administration comes in with an ideology that blocks its ability to see, articulate, and resolve those problems. It's an ideology that's a sharpened sort of right-wing Republican party ideology. It has no real intellectual base to it. It's just the ideology of a party. By intellectual base, I'm talking first, trickle-down economics. No reputable economist stands up and says, "Trickle down economics really works." Because we know the marginal propensity to consume of people who are making $100,000 a year and less is much higher than the marginal propensity to consume of people who are making $350,000 a year and more.

So therefore when you say you're going to give money to the rich so they'll make jobs for the poor -- that's not a very efficient way of producing jobs in the American economy. We know that, all things being equal, that the lower the tax rate at the margin, the greater the incentive to earn the extra dollar. But we also know -- it's just human nature to figure that out -- that in a society where you've got a lot of people that are struggling to pay the electricity bill and the telephone bill and you've got a few people who don't care what the electricity and telephone bill is, that the few people who don't care about these things ought to pay a higher proportion of their income to help the rest of the country than the people who are struggling with the necessities in life.

I mean this is just sort of basic principles. I think most Americans understand and appreciate it. For some reason, this administration can't. This administration has crafted an ideology that basically is designed to roll back the institutions that have helped this country. They promote the ideology through sloganeering, through labeling, name-calling, talk radio. But when you really get down and scratch it, there's not much there.

For example, take the idea of competition in schools. OK now, what is competition in schools? What does it really mean? Well, competition in business means you have somebody who's in a business that has a profit motive in it. It's measured every quarter. If the business doesn't keep up, the business is going to lose revenue, therefore it has an incentive to restructure, reorganize, re-plan, re-compete and stay in business.

Schools aren't businesses. Schools are institutions of public service. Their job--their product--is not measured in terms of revenues gained. It's measured in terms of young lives whose potential can be realized. And you don't measure that either in terms of popularity of the school, or in terms of the standardized test scores in the school. You measure it child-by-child, in the interaction of the child with the teacher, the parent with the teacher, and the child in a larger environment later on in life.

So when people say that competition is-this is sort of sloganeering, "Hey, you know, schools need this competition." No. I've challenged people: Tell me why it is that competition would improve a school. Most of them can't explain it. It's just like, "Well, competition improves everything so therefore it must improve schools."

If you want to improve schools, you've got to go inside the processes that make a school great. You've got to look at the teachers, their qualifications, their motivation, what it is that gives a teacher satisfaction, what it is a teacher wants to do in a classroom. We've got to empower teachers. Give them an opportunity to lead in the classroom. Teachers are the most important leaders in America. All that is lost in the sloganeering of this party. And the American people know it's lost. So you asked me to give you one thing about this party that's in power -- it's the sort of doctrinaire ideology that doesn't really understand the country that we're living in.

TPM: In the primary process, one of the things that you bring to the table is your foreign policy resume. You spent a career working with national security issues -- obviously being a general and so forth. It seems in many ways, though, that the threats that this country faces in the medium-term or maybe even the long-term are more asymmetric threats rather than the conventional military threats that we thought of in the Cold War period. How does your background suit you to guiding a country and a world where those are the threats.

CLARK: Because in foreign policy and foreign affairs you have to work with allies. It doesn't matter what the threat is. And in the world that I learned to work in, international law trumps diplomacy. And, except under the most extreme circumstances, diplomacy trumps force. Force is the ultimate action, but improperly applied, force only kills people and breaks things. It gets you into something. It doesn't give you your success. I've had the experience of putting together the complete packages.

TPM: Let me just touch on a couple of issues. Iraq is the major issue now, but there are a few others sitting there that could rise to the surface at any point. On the Korean Peninsula, is there a line that we have to say they cannot cross? And if there is, where is it?

CLARK: Well there was a line, we already set it, but this administration let it go by. This administration thought it was better for the country to permit North Korea to go ahead with the nuclear development program rather than to talk to it. In other words, this administration was more worried about embarrassing itself in front of its right-wing base by talking to the North than it was in preventing the emergence of another nuclear-armed power that could proliferate nuclear weapons. It was a tragic--it will be, it's possible that it could be, a tragic miscalculation. And like much I see in this administration, it's an administration that's put politics over sound policy. People on both sides of the aisle understood that the way to resolve the North Korean problem was to talk to North Korea--honestly talk to them.

TPM: Which is what the previous administration was in the process of doing.

CLARK: It's what the Clinton administration had done. Is North Korea wily, tough, paranoid, nasty? Sure, it's all those things. Has to be. It's a twenty-three- twenty-four-million population impoverished country in Asia--in the land of super-giants. Its survival as a separate state is an historical anomaly and nobody knows it better than the North Koreans. And that's why they're hyper and paranoid. That's why they built up an arsenal of weapons and forces that defies all rational explanation but is ultimately highly rational from their perspective. And so why can't we talk to that regime? We talked to them in the past.

TPM: Given that we let them--we sort of gave them--a tacit green-light, and now they're clearly moving ahead with the plutonium process, the uranium process is probably not quite so far along, but they probably have--we at least assume that they have--some nuclear weapons, but how do we deal with it now?

CLARK: It's not too late to talk to them.

TPM: How about Iran?

CLARK: Iran needs to be worked through the international community. But it's difficult to work Iran through the international community when you have alienated much of the international community by your policy in Iraq. Iran was always a greater threat than Iraq.

TPM: Why is that?

CLARK: There was an odd--Iran is larger. Had more power, more wealth, more independence, more maneuver room. It was not under UN sanctions, was not under an imposed inspection regime. Been a much tougher problem. And, my friends in the Israeli Defense Forces would have been the first to acknowledge it.

But, in the odd kind of geopolitical chess board game this administration seemed to want to play, they seemed to assume that you could get your forces into Iraq, and, like a game of checkers, you could skip across the Middle East--plop, plop, plop--as though in some metaphysical sense, it was easier to come ashore up through the Euphrates and Tigris valleys into the heart of the Middle East and southwest Asia, and then cross into the mountains of Iraq--excuse me, of Iran--or pivot and go towards Syria. It was analytically, geometrically satisfying, even though those of us who understood the situation at the time said it made little sense. It was old-think. It was 19th century geostrategy--

TPM: So, the Great Game? A sort of a new version of the Great Game?

CLARK: It was the Great Game with modern equipment, and hypermodern risks. And, in reality, the problems with Osama bin Laden were not problems of states. They were problems of a supranational organization which alighted in states, used states, manipulated elements of states, but wasn't going to be contained and destroyed by attacking and replacing governments.

TPM: I noticed that Doug Feith, who's obviously the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, had a statement a while back saying that the connection between terrorist organizations and state sponsors was, I think he said, the principal strategic thought behind the administration's policy.

CLARK: It's the principal strategic mistake behind the administration's policy. If you look at all the states that were named as the principal adversaries, they're on the periphery of international terrorism today. Syria -- OK, supporting Hezbollah and Hamas -- yeah, they're terrorist organizations. They're focused on Israel. They're getting support from Iran. It's wrong. Shouldn't be there. But they're there. What about Saudi Arabia? There's a source of the funding, the source of the ideology, the source of the recruits. What about Pakistan? With thousands of madrassas churning out ideologically-driven foot soldiers for the war on terror. Neither of those are at the front of the military operations.

TPM: Well, those are our allies, our supposed--

CLARK: Mentioning those two countries upsets the kind of nineteenth century geostrategy and the idea--this administration is not only playing that game, but they're more or less settling scores against the Soviet surrogates in the Cold War in the Middle East.

TPM: That being Syria, Lebanon

CLARK: The proxy states, Syria, Lebanon, whatever. These states are not -- they need to transform. But, why is it impossible to take an authoritarian regime in the Middle East and see it gradually transform into something democratic, as opposed to going in, knocking it off, ending up with hundreds of billions of dollars of expenses. And killing people. And in the meantime, leaving this real source of the problems -- the states that were our putative allies during the Cold War -- leaving them there. Egypt. Saudi Arabia. Pakistan.

TPM: Obviously, the big, really the foreign policy issue right now is Iraq. And, there was all the debate that went on before last March and April, which is sort of moot now. But the question is, what do we do now? We're in there, we have almost 150,000 troops -- that's an expense in itself -- let alone the reconstruction stuff. What do we do now?

CLARK: Well, I support our troops, and I want to see this be successful in Iraq, and that's a national imperative, that we be successful. What we've got to do is realistically look at the situation, put the right number of troops on the ground, hopefully, they'll be Iraqi troops. Secondly, there'd be international troops. Last resort, we may need more American troops, but that's not clear yet, to me.

I haven't been invited over there to take a look. I'd like to, but they haven't invited me to do that. Then the second problem is going after al Qaida. You must go after al Qaida. You know, let's not give them a free ride, re-forming in Pakistan, and penetrating into Afghanistan, and sending its messages around the world. Number three: if you're going to be successful in Iraq, you're probably going to have to change the dynamic in the Middle East. Right now, we've given Iran and Syria the strongest possible incentives to work against our purposes in Iraq, because we've let them know that they're next. So, from their perspective, they don't want to get invaded. They don't want to get knocked off because they're against the United States. It's only natural that they'd be working to make sure there's enough resistance in Iraq.

TPM: To keep us pinned down there?

CLARK: Exactly, exactly.

TPM: What is victory in Iraq?

CLARK: Well, I think that's an important question that we'd like to see the administration define. The elements of it might be the following: What kind of government? A unitary Iraq? Maybe a federalized Iraq? A common language, common currency, common -- no customs problems inside Iraq. Common schools, common flag, all the symbols of nationhood. So, you want to hold Iraq together. And, a country that doesn't threaten its neighbors, and a government that has enough security wherewithal to be able to protect itself and not become a recruiting base for al Qaida. And an Iraq that's able to be integrated into the modern world. So if you lay out those five criteria in some way, you probably could come up with a definition of success.

TPM: As we mentioned before, in different capacities you worked for a number of different administrations. Whether it was Ford, working directly in the White House, or for the last 15, 20 years in various capacities at a fairly senior level. You've seen these different presidents conduct foreign policy. What are your opinions of the different ones?

CLARK: Well, you know, nobody gets to be president of the United States without conspicuous strengths. But the ability to conduct foreign policy draws not only on the president himself but on the leadership of the administration. If you were to start here and work backwards, you'd say this administration was doctrinaire. You'd say that it didn't have a real vision in foreign policy. It was reactive. Hobbled by its right-wing constituency from using the full tools that are available -- the full kit-bag of tools that's available to help Americans be in there and protect their interests in the world.

Clinton administration: broad minded, visionary, lots of engagement. Did a lot of work. Had difficulty with two houses in congress that [it] didn't control. And in an odd replay of the Carter administration, found itself chained to the Iraqi policy -- promoted by the Project for a New American Century -- much the same way that in the Carter administration some of the same people formed the Committee on the Present Danger which cut out from the Carter administration the ability to move forward on SALT II.

TPM: This being the same neo-conservatives that people hear about in the press today?

CLARK: Right, some of the same people. And then, you know, if you go back to the Bush administration, they were there when the Berlin Wall fell. I think there was some artful maneuvering -- which the Clinton administration followed through on -- to extract Russian forces from the rest of Eastern Europe. That began in '89-'90, it was carried on, actually didn't finish until I think '94 when the last Russian forces pulled out of Latvia.

So both administrations get credit for that. I think the Bush administration as they worked the problem of [the] post-Cold War had difficulty understanding the significance of NATO and the role that Europe could play. They opened -- they were part of the fissure that emerged -- the Europeans, especially the French, were also part of that. But there's that famous quote from former Secretary [of State] Jim Baker about the problem in Yugoslavia saying, "We don't have a dog in that fight" or something. And I think that if you critique it from the standpoint of 15 years post, the first Bush administration's beginning, you say it was a time of revolutionary transformation and what we had to do at a time of transformation like that is hold even closer to our friends and our allies around the world.

Lord Palmerston in the 1830s, I think, in the UK, later quoted by Count Gorchakov, the Russian foreign minister in the 1880s, later quoted by Prime Minister Primakov in 1998, it was, at the original saying, "Britain has no permanent friends, only permanent interests." It became transformed into Russia. But it's the sentiment that we want to avoid in a modern world. What we wanted to have done, what we should have done in the late '80s was said, "Look, even though now we've eliminated the Soviet threat, we have permanent friends. You in Europe, you're our permanent friends. We will make our interests converge so that we strengthen our friendship. The friendship is more important than the interests, if you work this right over time, you can work to smooth off the sharp edges of conflicting interests. And I think that's still a recipe for moving forward.

As for Ronald Reagan, there were some things done well, some things done poorly, but one of the biggest things was it was the administration in which inflation came under control as the result of a lot of tough policies, some of them begun by Reagan's predecessor to attack the expectations that had built up in this country as a result of trying to do guns and butter during Vietnam. And it took years to drive these expectations out of the business community, out of the financial community. But as they disappeared and people began to accept core inflation rates of less than two and three percent and they didn't build cost escalators into everything, you established a much firmer sense of purpose and success in America. That's a bipartisan effort. I loved Reagan's speech at Pointe du Hoc. I was at the Pentagon, I was at the Pentagon as a colonel when he gave it on D-Day.

TPM: This is the forty-fifth anniversary I guess?

CLARK: Fortieth anniversary. Communications is really important for a president. We've had a few presidents in the twentieth century who were great communicators. Most aren't. But in terms of foreign policy, we went through a lot of shocks in the 1980s with our European allies. But ultimately it was Russia itself that broke. The Soviet Union fell apart. A combination of circumstances and pressures dating back to Franklin Roosevelt's and Harry Truman's early visions of how to win this competition, finally came to fruition.

TPM: We just crossed the Potomac River a few minutes ago. So that both means that my time is running short but also we're coming into Washington -- we've just come into Washington, DC. And obviously for the last two or three days there's been one story in this town. And that's about this beginning investigation. We don't know what the facts are, but it seems at least -- there's evidence out there -- that some high level officials in the administration, seemingly just for political reasons, exposed the cover of a CIA agent, a covert operative in the CIA, whose husband obviously, Joseph Wilson -- people know the background story. Obviously having been a four-star general, retired now, you've dealt with all sorts of classified and top-secret information. Just how does that strike you? That that could have happened? What was your reaction to that?

CLARK: Well, I'm mystified as to how it could have happened. I don't understand how people in the White House -- if that's where it came from -- in the political operation, would have had any knowledge about the qualifications, or the activities, of a retired ambassador's wife. They just wouldn't have -- how would they know that? That's why I've called for an impartial commission of inquiry, not associated with the executive branch, to go back into this, because there are enough charges and counter-charges out in this issue, in this very political administration. You have to take the intelligence community, especially the protection of censored sources, out of the political process. And that means you need an independent commission, which is not part of this administration, to look into the full circumstances and issues surrounding this case.

TPM: Now, obviously this particular case of whether this CIA employee's cover was blown, and so forth, gets back into this other issue of the uranium claims and forged documents, and you can sort of trace that back into the whole larger debate about intelligence--the quality of intelligence, the political uses of intelligence. Obviously, you've talked a lot on CNN and stuff like that -- what is, looking back, what are the key mistakes? Not on the formal, not on the operational plan of the war, key mistakes getting in? What weren't they thinking? What didn't they prepare for?

CLARK: Well, we don't know why they chose to go to Iraq in the first place. There's a lot of circumstantial evidence, but even Paul Wolfowitz admitted that the weapons of mass destruction issue was just the one issue that they could get most consensus on. Meaning, I suppose, that Colin Powell would have had more difficulty arguing against it then, let's say, a visionary scheme to transform the Middle East by playing hopscotch with military forces from country to country. So, that's the first question, is, why did they do it? And secondly is, why then? Why, when? Why, at that point in time, did they have to do that?

We don't know. And then you ask, well, when they took it to the United Nations, and when they got UN Security Council Resolution 1441 passed, why, at that point, didn't George Bush ask Karl Rove and say, "Karl. I've won the elections. I've done everything we wanted to do. [Inaudible] I'm a great wartime leader. Tell me again, why do we have to invade Iraq? What's in it for us, as America? Why can't we find another alternative? Why don't we just string this thing out? Let the international community fumble with it --we've got them going. We could, you know, knock out the critics and say, 'Look, I did go to the United Nations.'" You undercut the old whole unilateralist approach [argument], you argue that you're only using force as a last resort, let the half time play out. Why the rush? Don't know why.

TPM: You must have some sense.

CLARK: I think that it's really hard to understand it, but it goes back to the sort of doctrinaire, rigid, ideological approach that the administration's following. When you're looking at the facts in a pragmatic way, it was hard to construct the argument as to why you had to go in right away. It was so hard that we couldn't persuade our allies to come in with us. We couldn't even persuade the American people. Until it came time that the troops were actually there, and people said, "Well, you know, you've got the troops there, how long are you going to hold them there, this is getting embarrassing. Just go ahead and do it." At that point the polls started to raise--

TPM: So, sort of creating a situation [which] forced our hand on that.

CLARK: Exactly. I mean, the President went around, apparently, speaking around the country in February and March. I didn't hear him, but the quotes I've seen from then suggest that he went around saying, "If we're forced to go to war." Well, the only people that forced him to go to war was his own advisors. They forced the situation and the timing of it. It defies a good explanation. It needs to be -- it warrants an explanation. Even an investigation.

TPM: We're about to come up to Capitol Hill right now, and obviously I'm sure that -- you just flew in to Dulles. I'm sure that you've got a schedule of meetings with various [people]--how are you enjoying campaigning?

CLARK: I love it.

TPM: Yeah? How is it compared to being SACEUR [Supreme Allied Commander in Europe]?

CLARK: It's a lot more fun.

TPM: A lot more fun?

CLARK: Yeah. Because as SACEUR, I had life and death issues at risk. If we were to be successful in this campaign, those responsibilities will settle in again, even heavier. But right now, it's about reaching out. It's about communicating. It's about helping other people capture a vision, share, grow, experience, learn. It's an incredibly exciting thing to go around America and talk to people and have them tell you what they're thinking.

I was in New Hampshire on Saturday morning. I went to the YMCA. It was seven o'clock in the morning. There were already two ladies at work there, checking admissions passes. One of them told me that she works eighty hours a week. She works seven days a week. She works in the police station doing traffic tickets or something like this--you know, collating is her normal job, and then she works at the Y as an additional job. She works from eight o'clock in the morning to ten o'clock at night, six days a week. I was in awe of her. She has two children. She's a single mom. She puts those two children through school. Amazing. People share those kind of stories; we can get a real feel for what this country's about. And, a real determination. We can do more and be more and help more.

TPM: Thank you very much. I appreciate your time.

CLARK: Thank you, Josh.

End of Interview ...

Is Wesley Clark the One? | The Rolling Stone Interview 10/16/03

Interestingly this 2-hour interview was conducted on 9/11/03, six days before the announcement, yet it combines policy specifics with very fiery rhetoric.

Some highlights:

Why was going into Iraq a mistake?

We made a historic strategic blunder. We attacked a state rather than going after a terrorist. Iraq had no connection to the war on terror. Of all the states in the Middle East to give chemical, biological or nuclear weapons to terrorists, least likely was Iraq. Saddam's a control artist. He wouldn't have given bioweapons to Osama bin Laden unless Osama's mother, four wives and fifteen children were in one of his prisons so he could rip their hearts out if Osama screwed up. But we didn't want to face the tough task of going after bin Laden, so we did a bait-and-switch and went after Saddam instead. And now, look at the headline on today's New York Times: bin Laden seen with aide on tape. We're less secure now than we were before. Spending $80 billion and putting half the U.S. Army in Iraq has provided a supercharger to Al Qaeda recruiters.

We helped bin Laden. The only thing we could have done that would have helped him more is if we had invaded Saudi Arabia and captured Mecca. We've also squandered the support that brought 200,000 Germans out after 9/11 two years ago. They're not coming back out again -- not for this administration. You won't get any support out of the Germans and the French until you get a regime change in Washington.

When you were in the Army, you had a lot of contact with various White House staffs. Did you ever have any dealings with some of the people who now serve in the Bush administration?

When I was a thirty-year-old Army major, I was sent to Washington, where they put me in the Ford White House. This was 1974. Nixon had just resigned. They said, "How would you like to be staff secretary to this executive committee -- it'll have Henry Kissinger," who was then secretary of state; James Schlesinger, the secretary of defense; the director of the CIA and the counsel to the president. Well, for someone who'd just come to Washington, you can imagine how I felt. Pretty impressive, right? What I discovered was that the White House was full of paranoia and suspicion -- a real Watergate mentality. I'd bring something up, and they'd say, "Wes, if you ask a question like that, you can't work here." The reason the White House was that way was not only because of Watergate but because of the two guys in charge: Donald Rumsfeld, who was Gerald Ford's chief of staff, and Dick Cheney, who was his assistant.

Let's talk about issues beyond the war. What's your position on the environment?

People are going to look back in 100 years and ask, "What did you leave behind in this country?" We will leave two legacies. The first is the Constitution, which implements the will of the majority while protecting the minority. The second is the environment. And if you want to protect it, you've got to start now. Unfortunately, this administration has rolled back the legacy we will leave for our children and our grandchildren. I believe in clean air. They believe in letting power plants modernize without pollution controls. I believe in clean water and preserving wetlands. They believe "shit happens." I don't believe in opening up old-growth forests for logging in the name of fire prevention.

The president is urging Congress to grant him wider powers to wage war on terrorism at home.

Come on, give us a break. The Patriot Act, all 1,200 pages of it, was passed without any serious congressional discussion. There was no public accountability, and now he wants more? What does he think this country is? We shouldn't do anything with the Patriot Act until it's unwrapped. I'd like to see what violations of privacy it entails, and whether those violations are in any way justified by their preventing terrorism in this country. And we need to do it now before we take another step forward and pay for that.

The Military vs. the GOP - Are they falling out of love? By Timothy Noah | Slate 9/29/03

Noah suggests that from top to bottom the military has issues with both the administration's strategy and tactics. Especially ironic is a passage he quotes from Rumsfeld: A Personal Portrait:

[W]ithout civilian control the military, especially the staff of the joint chiefs, inevitably became the managers of their own affairs. This came more and more to mean that military promotions were determined on the basis not of ability but of congeniality with one's fellows. (emphasis added)

Isn't this the criticism Rumsfeld's fellow travellers have been levelling at Clark? That instead of being a unifying figure, his military record reveals a polarizing and de-stabilizing force? Makes you think that Rumsfeld, much like those on the far left, regard the military as a necessary evil and a spending black hole.

Speaking specifically of Gen. Clark, Noah suggests Clark has taken flak from other candidates for being a Johnny-come-lately to the Democratic Party: He voted for Reagan, praised George W. Bush, etc., before entering the Democratic nomination race. But this misses an important point: Never before in the modern era has a politically ambitious high-ranking military officer found it desirable, even from a purely careerist perspective, to associate himself with the Democrats. (emphasis added.) An important taboo has been broken.

But most damning is this appraisal of current policy by Anthony Zinni, the former U.S. commander for the Middle East: This administration came in with an idea of transforming the military into something—God knows what—lighter, smaller, quicker, whatever. The bill payer was going to be ground units, heavy units. And now we have a shortage of exactly what we needed out there. …

[W]hen we put [American soldiers] into harm's way, it had better count for something. It can't be because some policy wonk back here has a brain fart of an idea of a strategy that isn't thought out.

They should never be put on a battlefield without a strategic plan, not only for the fighting—our generals will take care of that—but for the aftermath and winning that war. Where are we, the American people, if we accept this, if we accept this level of sacrifice without that level of planning? Almost everyone in this room, of my contemporaries—our feelings and our sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam; where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice. We swore never again would we do that. We swore never again would we allow it to happen. And I ask you, is it happening again?

I suspect that many of us who did our best to avoid service in the sixties and partied through the seventies will be among those most insistent that the troops be treated fairly. We'll see how applicable WKC's quality of life reforms in the service are applicable to domestic problems, but by treating the armed forces as a touchstone of contemporary citizenship, the general can't help but expose the hypocrisy of the chickenhawks.

Media Whores Online | Neophyte Also a Natural

The NH Town Meeting 9/26 was very impressive. See my transcript of the general's opening remarks.

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General Wesley Clark fielded questions from voters at a New Hampshire town hall event Friday, broadcast on CSPAN. Candidate Clark was articulate, intelligent earnest, engaging, and enthusiastic. He not only demonstrated he's "ready for prime time" in terms of competing in the Democratic primary - but that he is ready today to eviscerate the Unelected Fraud both stylistically and substantively, in every area of domestic and foreign policy.

In short, he killed. It was a Clinton League performance, though General Clark demonstrated slightly less charisma than Big Dog, but a slightly greater ability to do what will be absolutely necessary in the '04 election: inspire voters to view the "big picture" and view the Democratic nominee as the candidate with a broad vision for protecting and defending American traditions and principles, restoring honor and dignity to a corrupt and embarrassing White House, and drastically improving the state of the economy and national security.

Particularly impressive was that General Clark managed to finesse his "nonpartisan," visionary qualities and brutal attacks on the current regime.

Should he win the Democratic nomination, Bush-Rove will do everything they can to avoid the town hall debate format. It was clear from the New Hampshire appearance that if the general and the squatter were to appear on the same stage to answer unscripted questions from ordinary Americans, the Littlest Emperor would appear strikingly and woefully unqualified, unlikable, and just plain ridiculous.

NH Town Hall 9/26, WKC's opening remarks (via CSPAN)
Transcribed from CSPAN, double checked for accuracy.

Questions and answers to follow. Streaming video at CSPAN.

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My name is Wes Clark. I'm the newest Democrat in the race. I'm probably the newest Democrat in this party. I'm running for president and I want your support.

What I really want to do tonight is hear from you. I want to know what's on your mind. I want to know what the issues are, that you're thinking about. I want to have a dialogue with you, but I'd just like to cover three things very quickly:

Number One: Why I'm a Democrat.
Number Two: Why I'm in this race.
And Number Three: What I think I can do for the United States as president.

Number One: Why I'm a Democrat. Well, I joined the United States military at the age of 17. I went to West Point, I raised my right hand, . . . looked out on the Hudson River. There were 807 of us. We believed in the pledge that John Kennedy brought to our hearts. We believed in trying to do something for our country. It was a difficult time in American history: we'd been through the Bay of Pigs, there'd been some nasty shenanigans between President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev over in Vienna, we were entering the Berlin crisis, we were heading toward the Cuban missile crisis. We were patriotic and we believed.

I served for 34 years. I got out in the summer of 2000. I'd never been involved in partisan politics. I served Democratic presidents, Republican presidents. I was around the Ford White House. I knew people like Rumsfeld and Cheney, and Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury secretary. And I'd been around the Democratic White House. I was there during the Clinton administration. So I knew the whole Clinton team and worked very closely with them as well. And for me politics was something that the military served its political leaders but you didn't engage in it other than to vote.

But when I looked at where the country was headed, I looked at the administration that took us without due reason into war in Iraq without an imminent threat and claimed it to be a pre-emptive attack without really assembling the evidence, but rather seeking evidence to justify, I guess, some predetermined course of action. I saw it was wrong.

I said at the time, there was no imminent threat. I said there were other ways to handle the problem. I warned that there weren't enough ground troops. And I suspected there wasn't a good plan for what happened afterwards. Tragically, it's all true.

I was in Walter Reed Army Hospital not too long ago and visited a young man who was there as one of the army patients. I've known him since he was five or six years old, his daddy worked for me. He enlisted in the army right after high school, he became a combat engineer, he went to Iraq, and they were clearing a minefield.

And of course, the Iraqis had mis-marked the minefield and as he approached a hundred meters away from where the mine was supposed to be, he stepped on a mine and he lost his leg below the knee. He's one of more than a thousand seriously injured U.S. soldiers, 200 dead, no telling what the count is among the Iraqi's.

We have an administration that doesn't have an adequate foreign policy. It hasn't made us safer and it's made us less respected in the world and it's brought us into Iraq where we're spending billions of dollars in a mission that wasn't strictly speaking necessary.

Then I looked at home and I realized that at home we weren't living up to the motto that I grew up with in the United States Army. We're a volunteer army. The only people who stay in the United States Army are people who want to. You have to persuade the soldier and the family that this is good for them.

And so we adopted a motto that we thought could capture the essence of what the United States Army stood for and we called it, "be all you could be." Many of you remember it. It was a great recruiting slogan for fifteen or twenty years for the army. But it was a lot more than a slogan. It was a principle that guided the way we tried to take care of men and women and the families in the army.

My wife and I worked for better education for kids, we worked for better housing for married and single soldiers, we worked for better health care, we worked for a proper environment, we worked for quality time for families. We did all these things because we believed in trying to help the men and women in uniform.

And when I got out, I found how much opportunity there was in this country to do more. And as I put together the foreign policy, the internationalism that I believed in, the belief in the development of human potential that I believed in, and I checked off my, sort of, core principles . . .

Well, I'm pro-affirmative action, I'm really proud of what we did in the United States Army, we did it well. I'm pro-choice because I think that it is a woman's choice and a woman's responsibility. I'm pro-environment, I'm pro-education, I'm pro-health, I'm pro-civil rights, I fought a war for human rights, and perhaps most of all, I'm pro-jobs, because if people want to contribute, they deserve the right to work. So if I was going to join a political party, I was either going to be the loneliest Republican in the United States of America, or I was going to be a very happy Democrat, and I'm so proud I'm a Democrat. I thank you for that.

People started coming to me about a year ago, maybe a little over a year ago. And they said, "you know, we've seen you on CNN, we've read your book, we know something about you, you've got to stand for office. You're saying these things, we believe `em, they've got resonance, you've got to stand for office.

Well, . . . I wasn't sure. It's a huge step to transition from the military into business, and I didn't want to go sell weapons and I tried not to rely on all my Pentagon buddies for consulting contracts. I didn't do very much of that at all. And the thought of transitioning to elective politics, well, it's like my wife said, she said, "You don't know anything about it," and so she was right, as she always is.

And so I continued to speak out, I thought maybe I can help, I'll be a commentator, I'll keep my commenting job on CNN, during the war I'll be able to brag about the men and women in uniform `cause I love `em, I'll be able to help the American public understand what's goin' on. A lot of people came to me and said, "You know, you're doing something very important by commenting and being on the "Aaron Brown Show," and so forth, so I felt good about that.

And then I came up here to New Hampshire in May and one of the people in the "Draft Clark" movement was there and she handed me a thousand letters. I was on "Tim Russert" in June and he said, "Will you consider at least running for office?" and I had to say, "If there's this draft movement out there, I guess I gotta consider it," and the pressure finally built up and it finally ended up, I was speaking to the Long Island Foreign Affairs Association about three or four weeks ago, and they said, "Do you thing we'll need to re- institute the draft?"

I said, "No, I don't think so because at least for the United States Army, we don't want people in there who don't want to be there. We want volunteers because you know, that's the way you'd run any organization, you don't want to force people to be there." And I said, "but here's what I'd like," I said, "This is a group of very well-to-do people who are all very civic minded," and I said, "So I'd like you to dedicate your first-born child or grand-child to the service of the armed forces of the United States. Would you do that?"

Well, some people nodded, some people laughed, and one guy said, "We'll do that when you answer the draft we've got on you and volunteer to stand for office." And I realized that I'd crossed the line. At that point, I was speaking out, I was committed and emotionally I wanted to do something to help the country.

I'm running because I think I can help this country. I think I've got the background, I've got the leadership experience. At home, I've got the leadership experience. Abroad, I've dealt at the head of state level, the minister of foreign affairs level, the heads of government, I've negotiated with some of the worst war criminals in human history, and I know what they're like, I've helped lead our forces in combat, so that's why I'm running.

And if you elect me, I've got a vision for America and I'm gonna stop right here because I want to hear what you all want to ask me, and I'll explain my vision as we go through, yes ma'am.

The 100 Year Vision by Wesley K. Clark

Looking ahead 100 years, the United States will be defined by our environment, both our physical environment and our legal, Constitutional environment. America needs to remain the most desirable country in the world, attracting talent and investment with the best physical and institutional environment in the world. But achieving our goals in these areas means we need to begin now. Environmentally, it means that we must do more to protect our natural resources, enabling us to extend their economic value indefinitely through wise natural resource extraction policies that protect the beauty and diversity of our American ecosystems - our seacoasts, mountains, wetlands, rain forests, alpine meadows, original timberlands and open prairies. We must balance carefully the short- term needs for commercial exploitation with longer-term respect for the natural gifts our country has received. We may also have to assist market-driven adjustments in urban and rural populations, as we did in the 19th Century with the Homestead Act.

Institutionally, our Constitution remains the wellspring of American freedom and prosperity. We must retain a pluralistic democracy, with institutional checks and balances that reflect the will of the majority while safeguarding the rights of the minority. We will seek to maximize the opportunities for private gain, consistent with concern for the public good. And the Clark administration will institute a culture of transparency and accountability, in which we set the world standard for good government. As new areas of concern arise - in the areas of intellectual property, bioethics, and other civil areas - we will assure continued access to the courts, as well as to the other branches of government, and a vibrant competitive media that informs our people and enables their effective participation in civic life. And even more importantly, we will assure in meeting the near term challenges of the day - whether they be terrorism or something else - that, we don't compromise the freedoms and rights which are the very essence of the America we are protecting.

If we are to remain competitive we will have to do more to develop our "human potential." To put it in a more familiar way, we should help every American to "be all he or she can be." For some this means only providing a framework of opportunities - for others it means more direct assistance in areas such as education, health care, and retirement security. And these are thirty year challenges - educating young people from preschool until they are at their most productive, helping adults transition from job to job and profession to profession during their adult lives; promoting physical vigor and good health through public health measures, improved diagnostics, preventive health, and continuing health care to extend longevity and productivity to our natural limits; and strengthening retirement security, simply because it is right; first for our society to assure that all its members who have contributed throughout their lifetimes are assured a minimal standard of living, and secondly to free the American worker and family to concentrate on the challenges of today. Such long-term challenges must be addressed right away, with a new urgency.

We have a solid foundation for meeting these challenges in many of the principles and programs already present today. They need not be enumerated here, except to argue for giving them the necessary priorities and resources. We can never ensure that every one has the same education, or health care, or retirement security, nor would we want to do so. But all Americans are better off when we ensure that each American will have fundamental educational skills and access to further educational development throughout their lives; that each American will have access to the diagnostic, preventive and acute health care and medicines needed for productive life, as well as some basic level of financial security in his or her retirement.

To do this we will have to get the resources and responsibilities right. In the first place, this means allocating responsibilities properly between public and private entities. Neither government nor "the market" is a universal tool - each must be used appropriately, whether the issues are in security, education, health or retirement. Then we must reexamine private versus public revenues and expenditures. We need to return to the aims of the 1990's when we sought to balance our federal budget and reduce the long- term public debt. Finally, it means properly allocating public responsibilities to regulate, outsource, or operate. This means retaining government regulation where necessary to meet public needs, and balancing the federal government's strengths of standardization and progressive financing with greater insights into the particular needs and challenges that State and local authorities bring.

As we work on education, health care, and retirement security we must also improve the business climate in the United States. This is not simply a matter of reducing interest rates and stimulating demand. Every year, this economy must create more than a million new jobs, just to maintain the same levels of employment, and to reduce unemployment to the levels achieved in the Clinton Administration, we must do much more immediately. This is in part a matter of smoothing the business cycle, with traditional monetary and fiscal tools, but as we improve communications and empower more international trade and finance, firms will naturally shift production and services to areas where the costs are lower. In the near term we should aim to create in America the best business environment in the world - using a variety of positive incentives to keep American jobs and businesses here, attract business from abroad, and to encourage the creation of new jobs, principally through the efforts of small business. These are not new concerns, but they must be addressed and resourced with a new urgency in facing the increasing challenges of technology and free trade. And labor must assist, promoting the attitudes, skills, education and labor mobility to enable long overdue hikes in the minimum wage in this country.

Quick Take on NH Town Hall Meeting (broadcast on C-Span, 9/26/03)

The format itself was effective and lent itself to intensely personal expressions of concern from those in attendance. Compared to the "men and women on the street" posing questions in the Cal debate, the NH folks were smart, intense and focused.

Two women stood out, and I thought the general's responses were powerful. The first lady spoke from her wheelchair and recited a frightening list of physical afflictions (as the very fit general locked in unblinklingly on what she was saying). It seemed to me as if she was going to ask about catastrophic health care, but at the last moment she asked, "Would you deny me access to medical marijuana?" Clark's response was literally without hesitation. "No," he said and left it at that. Partisan as I am, I thought it showed a unity of compassion and decisiveness, and not a hint of politics.

Later, a very angry and distraught woman, who had served many years in the armed forces, confronted the general about her experience with sexual abuse while under arms.

The general enfolded this wounded citizen and, to my mind with no air of patronization, apologized for his part as a senior commander in not ensuring her rights to justice "up through the line of command." (Cf. Cheney telling Russert that the CIA operative sent to Nigeria who later reported essentially "no worries," was so far below him in the hierarchy that he could not possibly be expected to know what the man said.)

Bottom line: he asked her to take him aside after the meeting so that he could follow up on her case.

Another perfect marriage of politics, policy, and moral standards. Now, I hope the general keeps us abreast of this citizen's fight for dignity.

Speaking of which, he wants to make the Patriot Act completely transparent. Having previously genuflected before the the Bill of Rights, WKC asserted, in effect, that the PAct is guilty until proven innocent, and that it needs to be audited constantly to justify itself.

Soundbite: "They say they need to know what books we're taking out of the library. I'd like to know who asked for that, how many times and what for?" Oy, did he brook this kind of interference in his own command strategies? (Let us note, however, that with all the mishagas over Kosovo, no one criticizes WKC as the ultimate desk jockey while on assignment as the Joint Chief's own chief strategist and security adviser.)

Another lady asked Clark if he would encourage or discourage a constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriages, Clark gave another one word answer, "Discourage."

All in all, terrific television and a quantum leap in engagement for the general. Very well done.

Rep. Charles B. Rangel Issues Statement in Support of General Wesley Clark's Presidential Candidacy

As a war veteran wounded in Korea, no one knows better than I the tragedy of war. In Iraq, people are losing their lives every day. Our troops are in harm's way, the human and financial costs continue to rise, and there is no end in sight. I think of my army unit which went to Korea in 1950. 53 year later, it is still there.

The decision to go to war in Iraq cannot be rescinded, but the exit strategy - how and when we will bring our brave men and women home - is a vital issue. So far, we have no indication from the current Administration that they have a plan. Some pundits have said the U.S. occupation in Iraq may last for several generations, and it is costing a billion dollars a week.

That is why I think it is so important that we as a nation change our direction as well as change our president.

I agree with former President Clinton that Democrats are fortunate that we have such a wide selection of presidential candidates. I cannot believe that the American people - while we all still feel the pain of the September 11th attacks - will think that George W. Bush, no matter how many miscalculations he makes, is the only person who can be president. We need a leader who can inspire us to rise above this time of tragedy and economic gloom and bring hope that the future will be more secure and more prosperous.

It is clear that Four-star General Wesley Clark can be that leader.

Wesley Clark is one of the greatest Americans alive today. During his 34 years in the army, he not only rose to become NATO Supreme Allied Commander, he also earned the silver star, two bronze stars and a purple heart fighting for his country. He commanded the successful NATO military action in Kosovo that saved millions of people while keeping allied casualties to a minimum.

If the Republicans think they have an edge on the issue of national security, Wesley Clark takes that off-the-table. No one can challenge the General's national security credentials or his preparation to be commander-in-chief. No one can question his patriotism. And no landing on an aircraft carrier or appearance in a flight suit can replace a purple heart and a silver star as a demonstration of service to this country.

He is a former military man who understands the costs of war and the necessity of the cooperation of the international community. He is an American citizen who knows that you cannot have a world-class economy and keep jobs in America if we fail to invest in public education and run up massive deficits.

What has made America great is that we are not afraid to dream, and to seek to make those dreams reality. Now more than ever, Americans must not be afraid to dream and to look forward to better times and better leadership. Wesley Clark's candidacy makes our dreams about a better future more realistic than ever.

The General understands that no terrorist, no matter how dangerous, should deny Americans the right to their dreams. The current Administration has abandoned so many Americans looking for a job and dreaming of a chance to better their lives and their families. This Administration has used the war on terrorism as an excuse to deny Americans reliable health care, decent education and child care, affordable housing, equal opportunity, and civil rights. If we cannot afford to help people fulfil their dreams because we have to continue unfair tax cuts for the wealthy at the same time we spend billions on the military, then the terrorists will have already won.

The dream of Wesley Clark's candidacy is now reality. I have talked to Wesley Clark and talked to his supporters. I am convinced that his entry has changed the political dynamic of the campaign and will improve the quality of debate on both defense and economic issues.