Wesley Clark

Not exactly a touchy-feely challenge, this...

From CNN....

Clark: Americans 'embarrassed' by Bush
Candidate attacks president's economic plan, Iraq strategy
Sunday, September 28, 2003

Democratic presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark has attacked President Bush's economic plan as a failure, and said the war in Iraq was "unnecessary" and lacks a way to succeed or end.

Speaking after an event in Washington at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual conference, Clark, 58, told reporters that the American people are "really embarrassed" by the administration's leadership.

"We're in there without a strategy to win, and without a strategy to exit properly, and now the president's asked for $87 billion to prosecute it," said Clark.

"I think the reality is really striking the American people that this is an administration that doesn't have an effective foreign policy, and it doesn't have an effective strategy for prosecuting the war on terror," he added.

Clark, who only joined the race 10 days ago, is a former CNN military analyst who led U.S. and allied forces in NATO's 1999 air war in Kosovo.


(This is a classic)....

"I've done more with a better plan for jobs here in eight days than this president's done in two and a half years," Clark said.



Get 'em in the hip pocket and the sense of what is right at the same time.

www.cnn.com...




[Edited on 29-9-2003 by MaskedAvatar]

Question, Does it NOT bother you that this guy has done a 180 degree flip from "war monger", Bush LOVER and supporter to what his current incantation is?

Is there NO VALUE assigned to INTEGRITY?

P...
m...

I don't know Clark, I am beginning to read about him.

To answer your question for the Bush administration, very clearly, no, they place no value on integrity at all.

Wellllll, maybe BEFORE you espouse the perceived virtues of someone you might want to know that they have NO INTEGRITY.

Bush has 7,000,000,000,000,000 x the integrity of Clark... Does that you make a little NERVOUS of Clark?

The blind appreciation/support of someone simply because they are your enemy's enemy can prove disheartening to be sure...

M...

..the infection spreads. Minds numbed to absolute, irrefutable evidence.

Clark is at the least disingenuous concerning his affiliations. He has more baggage in one week than any of the other nine(except Sharpie) to carry.

I just don't see him for the long run regardless of poll(s) prognosticatiing eveness with GWB at this point.

Springer, can I stop laughing yet? I relaLY need to stop rolling around on the floor.

Bush has integrity? This same president that cheated his way into office through a most questionable and disturbing election. This same president who lied to the public about Iraq, embraced people from Enron, who has blocked and derailed 9/11 investigation efforts, who has created a mess in Iraq, whose cabinet members are trigger happy warmongers and racist vile #s, a man who went AWOL from the air national guard during vietnam, thus, being a DESERTER....

This man has integrity? What is your version of integrity? Your definition?

Bush has kept none of his promises, unless he secretly promised to # America up more.

I wont say Clark is an angel, but to say Bush has 7 billion times his integrity is laughable.

Of course, MA, I do not trust clark much either. Progressive taxes, Rhodes scholarship, ect..........

But to even hint that bush has some integrity..........

Is comic material.

Originally posted by Springer
Question, Does it NOT bother you that this guy has done a 180 degree flip from "war monger", Bush LOVER and supporter to what his current incantation is?

Is there NO VALUE assigned to INTEGRITY?

P...
m...

War Monger? Is that your take on people who've served their country? If so, I'm not the only one who'll take issue with that categorization.
While both the spawn of Satan, I can appreciate a world of diffrence in the accomplishment department between Sr. & Jr., can't you? Purely in a military sense, I can appreciate Clark having a perspective that he did for Bush Sr., as well as the real world realization that every subordinate kisses azz to some degree.

But the integrity thing is really out there, bub. Regardless of for or againsts, I think Clark holds enough integrity to more than hold his own with anyone in the forth coming election, regardless of party.

=============
Tracing Clark's military map

By Jack Kelly
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published September 19, 2003

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark has thrown his helmet into the ring. He has improved the Democratic presidential field by entering it, just as he improved the Army by leaving it.

Gen. Clark is a brilliant man, and a brave one. A Rhodes scholar, he
was decorated three times for heroism as commander of an armor
company in Vietnam.

"Those of us who knew him as a captain thought the country would be
shortchanged if he didn't rise to very high rank," said a retired Army colonel
who was a student of Wesley Clark's when Gen. Clark taught at West Point.
But Gen. Clark's kindergarten teacher probably noted he doesn't play
well with others.

Gen. Clark "Is able, though not nearly as able as he thinks, and has
tended to put his career ahead of his men to the point of excess," said a
defense consultant well acquainted with the Army's senior officers. "He is
opportunistic and lacks integrity. He will be an absolute menace if he
gets into a position where he can exert influence on the Army because
he lacks true vision and is prone to be vindictive."

Gen. Clark "regards each and every one of his subordinates as a
potential threat to his career," said an officer who served under him
when Gen. Clark commanded a brigade of the 4th Infantry Division in
the 1980s. An officer who served under Clark when he commanded
the 1st Cavalry Division said he was "the poster child for everything
that is wrong with the general officer corps."

Gen. Clark doesn't get along terribly well with superiors or with
allies either, which lead to his premature departure as commander
of NATO.

Gen. Clark was CINCEUR when the Kosovo war began, and bears
much of the responsibility for President Clinton's decision to try to bomb
Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic out of Kosovo. Gen. Clark argued that
after a few days of bombing, Mr. Milosevic would fold his tent and slink
away.

When the Serbs didn't budge after months of bombing, Gen. Clark
lost Mr. Clinton's favor.

As the war dragged on, Gen. Clark advocated the use of ground troops.
This put him at loggerheads with Gen. Henry Shelton, the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, and with Gen. Eric Shinseki, chief of staff of the Army,
who thought this was a terrible idea. These generals faulted Gen. Clark
for getting America into an unnecessary war, and for having done a poor job
of preparing for it.

"NATO did not expect a long war," wrote former Clinton national
security aide Ivo Daalder. "Worse, it did not even prepare for the possibility."

The conduct of the war drew unprecedented criticism from Gen. Clark's
predecessor, Gen. George Joulwan, and a quiet rebellion by subordinate
commanders.

"Clark found his control over ongoing operations eroding," wrote
retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich. "Rather than the theater commander,
he became hardly more than a kibitzer."

What may have triggered Gen. Clark's early departure from NATO was a
confrontation with the British general who was to command NATO peacekeepers.

After a Serb surrender had been negotiated with the help of the Russians,
Gen. Clark ordered British Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson to parachute troops onto
the airport at the Kosovar capital of Pristina, so NATO would hold it before
Russian peacekeepers arrived.

Gen. Jackson refused. "I'm not going to start the Third World War for
you," he told Gen. Clark, according to accounts in British newspapers.
Shortly after the confrontation with Gen. Jackson, Gen. Clark was told his
tour as CINCEUR would end two months early. Neither Gen. Shelton nor
Defense Secretary William Cohen attended his retirement ceremony, a
remarkable snub for a four-star general.

Gen. Clark read Mr. Milosevic wrong, helping to provoke the Kosovo
war, which he then fought badly. Gen.Clark picked up where he left off in his
second career as a television kibitzer of military operations. As an
analyst for CNN, Gen. Clark harshly criticized the war plan for Iraq
devised by Gen. Tommy Franks, the CENTCOM commander, and Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Gen. Clark turned out to be completely
wrong.

It says something fascinating about the Democratic field that this
failed general is the class of it.

Jack Kelly, a syndicated columnist, is a former Marine and Green
Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the
Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh (Pa.)
Post-Gazette.

heres Clarks views on Homeland Security....you can find his position on other issues at the link...Clark On The Issues...its a pro Clark site from PA

Homeland Security

Working productively with America's allies is critical to winning the war against terrorism.

"Terrorism is a multilateral problem. You cannot defeat it in one nation. You need international police work, teamwork, international harmonization of laws against terror, a whole series of things. You act unilaterally; you lose the commitment of your allies to make it work. That's the one thing that will kill you in the war on terrorism."


"Much of the terrorist network draws support and resources from within countries friendly or allied with us. And here there are very real limitations to the use of American military force. What we really need are closer alignments... Through greater legal, judicial, and police harmonization, we need to make the international environment more seamless for us than it is for the international terrorists we seek."


"For better or worse, however, the war against terror appears to be under exclusive American control. And every twinge of American decision-making that smacks others as U.S. unilateralism undercuts our friends abroad, the very people who must align their laws and procedures with our own if we are to win."
The United States needs to keep homeland security and the war against terrorism at the top of our list of national priorities; we can't be distracted by other entanglements, including Iraq, that might divert our attention.

"The issue to me has been that we have known for a long time that Osama bin Laden is a problem. The difficulty was always to mobilize the American people and bring enough comprehensive pressure to bear to do something against terrorism. Well, 9-11 did that. But the administration has squandered a lot of the international goodwill that came our way after the attacks and is now squandering our domestic energy by forcing us into Iraq."


The Bush administration's mistake in Iraq, says Clark, is one of priorities. "They picked war over law. They picked a unilateralist approach over a multilateral approach. They picked conventional forces over special-operations forces. And they picked Saddam Hussein as a target over Osama bin Laden."

[Edited on 9-10-2003 by Creepy]

heres another ats thread about Clark...

www.abovetopsecret.com...