Beautiful stuff as always, Ron...the Clark campaign is indebted to you. I am including your website link and that of US4Clark (which you are a big part of, I notice) on our Clark business card that we'll be printing up for Outreach. I encourage everyone to do the same. I loved your biting assessment on the Three GOP Stooges.

Best Regards,
Alexandrs

Alexandra,

Let's look at this from their point of view. If WKC were not running, no one in the media or public life would be asking a retired army senior to be commenting on the qualifications of a candidate. Given that one thing they all have in common is that they were "non-partisan" as opposed to "non-political" (Shelton and Cohen are trying to have it that Clark was the politician in their love triangle.)

Shelton and Schwarzkopf are not comfortable making these remarks, but a general has trained himself to always be affirmative even when he's being negative. Their distaste for the whole thing is offloaded onto WKC. It is telling that in the local newspaper report of Gen. Shelton's first smear, he reached for his glass of water on the podium after being asked would he support Wesley Clark for president"? (not a question I would have thrown him, but I'm not a pro or a jerk.)

"I wish this were a drink," he began, rather poignantly. It was clearly a question he hoped he would not have to answer, because he had decided long ago, either consciously or not, that he and Wesley Clark were not going to agree.

That said, Gen. Shelton is apparently either a Democrat and/or strongly believes John Edwards is a very good senator for their home state of North Carolina (whose votes, Edwards and Shelton have pretty effectively taken from Clark for the nonce.) He is almost certainly not a Republican operative, although given the pretzel the Republicans have made of every value America holds close, Shelton could be Zell Miller in the making.

I would never describe men like Gen. Shelton and Gen. Schwarzkopf as "stooges." Rather the opposite: I think in their heart they believe Wesley Clark will fail at this mission and they are putting distance between him and them so that the image he creates of "the military" doesn't rub off on them. Oh ye of little faith!

This all comes from the stupid "Bring it on" mentality that has given us a cheerleader without a game plan. How good can anyone who has served under arms feel about their sitting commander-in-chief except to support him as a symbol? It does not encourage me that Howard Dean and our party necessarily have to describe the President of the United States as an empty suit.

Ron, I'll reply to this tomorrow when I have some brain matter working (I am so tired -- just got back from a Clark fundraiser).