the chutry experiment

http://www.fair.org/press-releases/clark-antiwar.html

FAIR MEDIA ADVISORY:
Wesley Clark: The New Anti-War Candidate?
Record Shows Clark Cheered Iraq War as "Right Call"

September 16, 2003

The possibility that former NATO supreme commander Wesley Clark might enter the race for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination has been the subject of furious speculation in the media. But while recent coverage of Clark often claims that he opposed the war with Iraq, the various opinions he has expressed on the issue suggest the media's "anti-war" label is inaccurate.

Many media accounts state that Clark, who led the 1999 NATO campaign against Yugoslavia, was outspoken in his opposition to the invasion of Iraq. The Boston Globe (9/14/03) noted that Clark is "a former NATO commander who also happens to have opposed the Iraq war." "Face it: The only anti-war candidate America is ever going to elect is one who is a four-star general," wrote Michael Wolff in New York magazine (9/22/03). Salon.com called Clark a "fervent critic of the war with Iraq" (9/5/03).

To some political reporters, Clark's supposed anti-war stance could spell trouble for some of the other candidates. According to Newsweek's Howard Fineman (9/8/03) Clark "is as anti-war as Dean," suggesting that the general would therefore be a "credible alternative" to a candidate whom "many Democrats" think "would lead to a disaster." A September 15 Associated Press report claimed that Clark "has been critical of the Iraq war and Bush's postwar efforts, positions that would put him alongside announced candidates Howard Dean, Sen. Bob Graham of Florida and Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio as the most vocal anti-war candidates." The Washington Post (9/11/03) reported that Clark and Dean "both opposed the war in Iraq, and both are generating excitement on the Internet and with grass-roots activists."

Hearing Clark talking to CNN's Paula Zahn (7/16/03), it would be understandable to think he was an opponent of the war. "From the beginning, I have had my doubts about this mission, Paula," he said. "And I have shared them previously on CNN." But a review of his statements before, during and after the war reveals that Clark has taken a range of positions-- from expressing doubts about diplomatic and military strategies early on, to celebrating the U.S. "victory" in a column declaring that George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair "should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt" (London Times, 4/10/03).

Months before the invasion, Clark's opinion piece in Time magazine (10/14/02) was aptly headlined "Let's Wait to Attack," a counter-argument to another piece headlined "No, Let's Not Waste Any Time." Before the war, Clark was concerned that the U.S. had an insufficient number of troops, a faulty battle strategy and a lack of international support.

As time wore on, Clark's reservations seemed to give way. Clark explained on CNN (1/21/03) that if he had been in charge, "I probably wouldn't have made the moves that got us to this point. But just assuming that we're here at this point, then I think that the president is going to have to move ahead, despite the fact that the allies have reservations." As he later elaborated (CNN, 2/5/03): "The credibility of the United States is on the line, and Saddam Hussein has these weapons and so, you know, we're going to go ahead and do this and the rest of the world's got to get with us.... The U.N. has got to come in and belly up to the bar on this. But the president of the United States has put his credibility on the line, too. And so this is the time that these nations around the world, and the United Nations, are going to have to look at this evidence and decide who they line up with."

On the question of Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, Clark seemed remarkably confident of their existence. Clark told CNN's Miles O'Brien that Saddam Hussein "does have weapons of mass destruction." When O'Brien asked, "And you could say that categorically?" Clark was resolute: "Absolutely" (1/18/03). When CNN's Zahn (4/2/03) asked if he had any doubts about finding the weapons, Clark responded: "I think they will be found. There's so much intelligence on this."

After the fall of Baghdad, any remaining qualms Clark had about the wisdom of the war seemed to evaporate. "Liberation is at hand. Liberation-- the powerful balm that justifies painful sacrifice, erases lingering doubt and reinforces bold actions," Clark wrote in a London Times column (4/10/03). "Already the scent of victory is in the air." Though he had been critical of Pentagon tactics, Clark was exuberant about the results of "a lean plan, using only about a third of the ground combat power of the Gulf War. If the alternative to attacking in March with the equivalent of four divisions was to wait until late April to attack with five, they certainly made the right call."

Clark made bold predictions about the effect the war would have on the region: "Many Gulf states will hustle to praise their liberation from a sense of insecurity they were previously loath even to express. Egypt and Saudi Arabia will move slightly but perceptibly towards Western standards of human rights." George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair "should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt," Clark explained. "Their opponents, those who questioned the necessity or wisdom of the operation, are temporarily silent, but probably unconvinced." The way Clark speaks of the "opponents" having been silenced is instructive, since he presumably does not include himself-- obviously not "temporarily silent"-- in that category. Clark closed the piece with visions of victory celebrations here at home: "Let's have those parades on the Mall and down Constitution Avenue."

In another column the next day (London Times, 4/11/03), Clark summed up the lessons of the war this way: "The campaign in Iraq illustrates the continuing progress of military technology and tactics, but if there is a single overriding lesson it must be this: American military power, especially when buttressed by Britain's, is virtually unchallengeable today. Take us on? Don't try! And that's not hubris, it's just plain fact."

Another "plain fact" is this: While political reporters might welcome Clark's entry into the campaign, to label a candidate with such views "anti-war" is to render the term meaningless.

http://www.progressive.org/webex03/wx091903.html

Check Clark's Record
by Matthew Rothschild
September 19, 2003

Desperate Democrats love a man in a uniform.

But the sudden rush of enthusiasm for former General Wesley Clark leaves me cold.

Here's a guy who, as Supreme Commander of NATO during the Kosovo war, was ultimately responsible for using cluster bombs and depleted uranium, for targeting the bridges and electrical grids of Yugoslavia, and for mistakenly bombing a train, a village, a hospital, and the Chinese embassy. He also repeatedly targeted Yugoslavia's TV headquarters, killing at least twenty people there.

"At least 1,200 civilians have died in NATO accidents," Steven Erlanger of The New York Times reported at the end of the war. On May 27, 1999, The Wall Street Journal ran an article that said: "On the sensitive topic of civilian casualties, Gen. Clark emphasized that no air war was perfect and that, to prevail, the (NATO) ambassadors should brace themselves for more collateral damage. 'Basically, the message was that if you spend your time worrying about collateral damage, then you're off base,' said (one) NATO diplomat. 'He emphasized that this has been the most precise air campaign in history, but that no system is perfect.' "

During the war, Clark also fobbed off the problems facing the hundreds of thousands of refugees in Kosovo whom the Serbs predictably forced out after NATO started the bombing. Refusing to drop relief supplies to the refugees, Clark said, "Our view on this is that, frankly, this is a problem that's caused by President Milosevic. He needs to address this problem."

On top of that, Clark threatened extremely reckless actions against Russia. He proposed that NATO should board or bomb Russian ships to make sure they weren't carrying weapons to the Serbs, and as the war was winding down, he was in a mad race with the Russians to get to an airfield in Pristina first.

As Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation points out, Clark actually ordered a confrontation with Russian units that were approaching the airfield, but fortunately the British general in charge of the international force told Clark, "Sir, I'm not starting World War III for you."

This is the guy that the "Anybody but Bush and Dean" crowd wants to be President?

Clark is getting a lot of mileage in the media for being opposed to the Iraq War. But how opposed was he? As Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting noted, Clark, back on January 21, told CNN, "I probably wouldn't have made the moves that got us to this point, but just assuming that we're here at this point, then I think that the President is going to have to move ahead, despite the fact that the allies have reservations." Sounding all the world like Henry Kissinger, he said, "The credibility of the United States is on the line."

This view will not fly with Democratic primary voters who are motivated to support a genuine anti-war candidate.

On domestic issues, all Democrats should wonder what they're window-shopping for when it comes to Clark. The Wall Street Journal reports that he actually voted for Ronald Reagan.

So before everyone stands at attention and salutes Clark, it might be prudent to examine his record.

Thanks for stopping by my blog, Gen. Clark. Quite frankly, I'm surprised that you would send these articles along that are so critical of your candidacy.

I still haven't decided who I'll vote for in the Georgia Democratic primary, despite the link to Howard Dean's blog in my blogroll, but I have to admit I'm impressed by the swiftness and ferocity of the Clark hateration that has already taken shape. That's usually the sign of an attractive candidate.

I do think that Clark's "wavering" on Gulf War II must be understood in terms of the deceptive premises from which it was launched, especially the fabrications regarding WMD. The discussion of Clark's behavior on the battlefield in Serbia is a bit more complicated, especially the face-off with the Russians over the Pristina airfield. The British general's use of the phrase "World War III" has a powerful resonance, but it likely exaggerates things considerably, making Clark appear to be the reincarnation of Dr. Strangelove.

I still have mixed feelings about Clark as a candidate, and I stand by my initial analysis: he's an erudite individual who has the potential to bring an interesting perspective to the Democratic debates, I'm more worried now that candidates to the left (especially Kucinich) may see their voices further marginalized by Clark's participation in the race.

Hello,

If Wesley Clark could be so blind to the Bush administration's obvious determination to attack Iraq under any pretext, despite unprecedented worldwide protests, then he is too clueless to be president. It's a poor excuse to say that this four-star general and former Supreme Commander of NATO was taken in by "deceptive premises" while millions of ordinary people around the world saw through the lies and took to the streets in protest.

Thank you.

That's a fair point. I've been thinking about these apparent inconsistencies quite a bit, and I do think that Clark has been misrepresented somewhat in the press because they want simple answers to their questions about Clark's stance on the war.

I was, in fact, one of the millions of people who objected to the war in Iraq and attended several protests. More than anything, I've been trying to allow Clark's positions on the war, on defense, to emerge in order to better understand his candidacy. I'm still leaning toward Dean in the Democratic primaries, in part because his objections to the war were much more direct.

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0910-07.htm

Was Gen. Clark Also "Unprepared" for the Postwar?
by Zoltan Grossman
CommonDreams.org
Sept. 10, 2003

In his apparent quest for the Democratic Presidential nomination, General Wesley Clark rightly criticizes President Bush for waging a "pre-emptive" invasion of Iraq, and in particular for being "unprepared" for the post-invasion occupation of the country. Some Democrats are being drawn to the former NATO Supreme Commander as an authoritative voice against the Iraq debacle, and a "pragmatic" alternative to the disastrous Bush Presidency.

Yet these Democrats apparently have short memories. It was only four years ago that General Clark waged a war against Yugoslavia that had similarly shaky motives and spiraling postwar consequences. Clark has whitewashed the 1999 Kosovo intervention as a "humanitarian" campaign to rescue Kosovar Albanians from Serbian "ethnic cleansing," even though it actually helped fuel the forced explusions. The General credits NATO bombing of Serbian cities for bringing about the fall of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, even though Serbian democrats loudly objected that it undermined and delayed their ultimate victory. Clark claims that the postwar NATO occupation brought "peace" to Kosovo, but he was clearly unprepared for the violent "ethnic cleansing" that took place on his watch, largely facilitated by his decisions, under the noses of his troops.

First, the NATO intervention made a bad situation worse in Kosovo. The nasty civil war between Milosevic's Serbian nationalist government and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) militia in the Albanian-majority province had heated up in 1998-99. About 2,000 people had been killed, including civilians on both sides. Voices within the Clinton Administration clamored not only for "punishing" Milosevic, but for (pre-emptively) ejecting Serbian forces from Kosovo to prevent him from carrying out ethnic cleansing. Under Western pressure, Milosevic offered to withdraw from Kosovo, but the peace talks broke down.

Hours after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia began on March 24, 1999, the Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign began, expelling hundreds of thousands of Albanians, and creating an enormous refugee crisis. CIA director George Tenet had predicted in February that a NATO "stick in the nest" could provoke just such ethnic cleansing. Accused of being "unprepared," General Clark defended the war as "coercive diplomacy," saying "This is the way the NATO leaders wanted it." The bombing was not in response to the ethnic explusions, but gave Milosevic the excuse and justification for them. The Kosovo disaster was a self-fulfilling prophecy, much like President Bush invading Iraq to eject phantom "terrorists," and in the process creating a new cause and battleground for them.

Second, the NATO bombing alienated Serbian civilians who had led the opposition to Milosevic. Cities that had voted heavily against Milosevic were among those targeted with bombing. U.S. jets dropped cluster bombs on a crowded marketplace in Nis. Civilian infrastructure, such as trains, busses, bridges, TV stations, civilian factories, hospitals and power plants, were repeatedly hit by NATO bombs. Depleted Uranium munitions left behind radioactive dust around targets, and bombed chemical plants released clouds of poisonous smoke. Estimates of civilian deaths in the bombing range from 500 to 2,000, with the Washington Post estimating 1,600 (a tally is at www.counterpunch.org/dead.html ) These civilian casualties are largely forgotten by those who feel that bombs dropped by a Democratic president are somehow more noble than those dropped by a Republican president.

The Serbian democratic opposition strongly condemned the bombing as undermining and delaying their efforts to oust President Milosevic, and as strengthening his police state. It was not the NATO bombing but Serbs' largely nonviolent revolution that overthrew Milosevic in October 2000, and replaced him with democratic leader Vojislav Kostunica, who had opposed NATO's war. In much the same way, many Iraqis who hated Saddam Hussein have criticized U.S. betrayals and sanctions--under both Bush and Clinton administrations--for strengthening Saddam's hand. Many of these same Sunnis and Shi'ites repressed by Saddam are today calling for the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq, in order to regain their sovereignty.

Third, as NATO troops occupied Kosovo in June 1999, Albanian nationalists unleashed their own program of ethnic cleansing. They attacked and expelled not only thousands of Serbs from communities that had survived in Kosovo for centuries, but also Roma (Gypsies), Turks, Jews, and any other non-Albanians. The Western media defined these attacks as "revenge" or "retaliation" for Serbian ethnic cleansing. But the KLA militia, like its right-wing nationalist counterparts in Bosnia, had long had the goal of an ethnically pure state. Instead of cracking down on the KLA fighters, NATO invited them to join its new Kosovo Protection Corps police force. In the months after the NATO occupation began, Kosovo became far more ethnically "pure" than Milosevic had ever made it, with the percentage of ethnic minorities lower than ever in its history. Amnesty International observed that General Clark's NATO was "unprepared for the massive abuses of human rights" under the postwar occupation.

Most U.S. media reviews of the wars in former Yugoslavia describe U.S. and NATO interventions as well-intentioned efforts to halt "ethnic cleansing." Yet the perception in the Balkan region is far different. The U.S. never dropped a single bomb to stop Croatian forces from ethnic cleansing of Serbs or Bosnian Muslims (in fact, U.S. bombing backed up Croatian forces hours before they forcibly expelled Serbs from Croatia in 1995). The memory of NATO in former Yugoslavia is not of a neutral "peacekeeper," but of a military that took sides with Croatian and Albanian ethnic cleansers against Serbian ethnic cleansers. Postwar agreements (with Clark's involvement) merely rubberstamped the de facto ethnic partitions of Bosnia and Kosovo that had long been sought by their nationalist militias.

Like in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. interventions in ex-Yugoslavia left behind a new cluster of U.S. military bases, including the sprawling Camp Bondsteel in U.S. Sector Kosovo. Together, this string of permanent U.S. bases stretching from Hungary to Pakistan is creating a new U.S. "sphere of influence" in the strtegic region between the European Union and East Asia. General Clark was surely aware that the U.S. presence in Kosovo would not be temporary, and uses the prospect of ethnic instability to justify it, much as President Bush does to justify a long-term presence in Iraq. Earlier this year, as one of the slew of cable news "armchair generals" coldly assessed the advance of the Iraq invasion, Clark never challenged the underlying premise that the U.S. military should oust Saddam, rather than the Iraqi people, or that the U.S. should have a permanent presence in the Gulf region.

The 1999 Kosovo War had similar origins and outcomes as the 2003 Iraq War. In the 2004 election, do we face the hideous prospect of voting for one flawed war over another? Far from posing a "pragmatic" alternative to President Bush, Clark's ascendancy would be a failure for the peace movement that has made such advances in community organizing over the past year. In order not to alienate the large segment of the electorate energized by the movement, Democrats are well advised not to nominate a leader with blood on his hands.

[Dr. Zoltan Grossman is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire. His peace writings can be seen at this link .]

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn09182003.html

The Fire Last Time
Wesley Clark and Waco
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Originally Published June, 1999

On February 28, 1993 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms launched its disastrous and lethal raid on the Branch Dividian compound outside Waco, Texas. Even before the raid, members of the US Armed Forces, many of them in civilian dress, were around the compound.

In the wake of the Feb 28 debacle Texas governor Anne Richards asked to consult with knowledgeable military personnel. Her request went to the US Army base at Fort Hood, where the commanding officer of the US Army's III corps referred her to the Cavalry Division of the III Corps, whose commander at the time was Wesley Clark. Subsequent congressional enquiry records that Richards met with Wesley Clark's number two, the assistant division commander, who advised her on military equipment that might be used in a subsequent raid. Clark's man, at Richard's request, also met with the head of the Texas National Guard.

Two senior Army officers subsequently travelled to a crucial April 14 meeting in Washington, D.C. with Attorney General Janet Reno and Justice Department and FBI officials in which the impending April 19 attack on the compound was reviewed. The 186-page "Investigation into the Activities of Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Towards the Branch Davidians", prepared by the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight and lodged in 1996 (CR 104 749) does not name these two officers and at deadline CounterPunch has so far been unable to unearth them. One of these officers had reconnoitered the Branch Davidian compound a day earlier, on April 13. During the Justice Dept. meeting one of the officers told Reno that if the military had been called in to end a barricade situation as part of a military operation in a foreign country, it would focus its efforts on "taking out" the leader of the operation.

Ultimately tanks from Fort Hood were used in the final catastrophic assault on the Branch Davidian compound on April 19. Certainly the Waco onslaught bears characteristics typical of Gen. Wesley Clark: the eagerness to take out the leader (viz., the Clark-ordered bombing of Milosevich's private residence); the utter disregard for the lives of innocent men, women and children; the arrogant miscalculations about the effects of force; disregard for law, whether of the Posse Comitatus Act governing military actions within the United States or, abroad, the purview of the Nuremberg laws on war crimes and attacks on civilians.

Waco Update:
The Delta Force Was There

Amid Nato military supremo Wesley Clark's onslaught on the civilians of Serbia the question arose: did Clark hone his civilian-killing skills at Waco, where the FBI oversaw the largest single spasm of slaughter of civilians by law enforcement in US history, when nearly a hundred Branch Davidians died amid an assault by tanks, flame-throwers and snipers.

The tanks were from Fort Hood, where Wesley Clark was, in early 1993, commander of the Cavalry Division of the US Army's III Corps. In our last issue we cited a congressional report commissioned in the aftermath of Waco which described how Texas governor Anne Richards had consulted with Clark's number two at Fort Hood. Then, on April 14, there was a summit at the Justice Department in Washington, where Attorney General Janet Reno, top Justice Department and FBI officials and two unnamed senior Army officers reviewed the final assault plan scheduled for April 19.

The two Army officers at the Justice Department that day were Colonel Gerald Boykin, and his superior, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the head of Special Forces at Fort Bragg. Though Clark (who had served with Schoomaker) was not directly involved in the onslaught on the Branch Davidians, the role of the US Army in that affair throws into harsh relief the way prohibitions against the use of the US military for civilian law enforcement can be swiftly by-passed.

Boykin and Schoomacher were present because the Army's Fort Bragg-based Combat Applications Group-popularly known as the Delta Force-had been enlisted as part of the assault team on the Branch Davidian Compound. It appears that President Clinton had signed a waiver of the Posse Comitatus Act, with the precedent being Ronald Reagan's revocation of the Act in 1987, allowing the Delta Force to be involved in suppressing the Atlanta prison riot.

The role of the Delta Force, the identity of the two Army officers, the revocation of Posse Comitatus all form part of the disclosures of a forthcoming documentary film, Waco: A New Revelation, put together by part of the team that produced an earlier, excellent film, Waco: Rules of Engagement. Following our questions about Wesley Clark's possible involvement at Waco, producer/researcher Mike McNulty called us with some details of his new documentary-directed by Jason van Fleet and due to be released in July.

After energetic use of Freedom of Information Act enquiries, plus research in three repositories in Texas holding evidence from the Waco inferno, plus other extensive investigations, McNulty and his team have put together an explosive file:

. 28 video tapes from the repositories show that in the final onslaught on the Waco compound were members of the US military in special assault gear and with name tags obscured. As noted above, Clinton's revocation of the Posse Comitatus Act made this presence legal. McNulty isolates Vince Foster as the White House point man for the Waco operation.

McNulty cites Foster's widow as saying that the depression that prompted the White House lawyer's death was fueled by horror at the carnage at Waco for which the White House had given the ultimate green light. Foster was writing a Waco report when he died. McNulty says that some documents about Foster and Waco were among those removed from his office after his death, later to surface in a White house store room sheltering archives of the First Lady.

The film, McNulty says, discloses how the federal assault team placed explosives on top of a compound bunker whither the feds believed the Branch Davidian leaders might flee. Material evidence collected by McNulty shows that the FBI/Delta assault force bombarded the compound with pyrophoric--i.e. fire-causing--projectiles.

Erosion of Posse Comitatus Act prohibitions on the involvement of the US military in law enforcement here is particularly sinister. The congressional report on Waco showed that some Army officers were extremely disturbed at requests for military assistance by the FBI, and there were some acrimonious exchanges at the time. The drug war, needless to say, has been a prime solvent in this process of erosion. One factor is the malign cross-fertilization occurring when these so-called "elite units"--the Army's Combat Application Group, the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, the Navy's SEALs--all train together, along with SWAT teams from police forces across the country. Thousands of law enforcement officers have now cut their teeth on the homicidal commando techniques most flagrantly displayed by the killers assembled in the British SAS, members of which were also present at the Waco siege. The Rambo mindset now saturates law enforcement, and even the rangers in Fish and Game Departments now pack heat. Both CounterPunch editors have had the experience of being asked to down their fly rods and produce ID, by young Fish and Game rangers with semi-automatics on their hips.

After receiving these comments, I'm beginning to seriously rethink my comments policy. Cutting and pasting an article from a third source doesn't fit within the spirit of commenting on blogs as I imagine it; instead it's comment spam. Sending these articles along without any commentary isn't seriously engaging Clark's candidacy; instead it comes across as an attack. It's an argumentative strategy that appears to be the blogging equivalent of the "ditto-head."