Reply #137: You will eventually find my answer to you above. Now, about this smear

[Tom Rinaldo]

First let me preface this by saying that I am generally very positive about FAIR. I have a personal friend who does work for them. FAIR founder Jeff Cohen comes up to my part of the woods with some regularity, I've been at several meetings with him and a I have a personally autographed copy from him of "Cable News Confidential", which is a great book. Having said that, no one gets it completely right all of the time, and they didn't with Clark this time.

The surest sign of an attempt to smear General Wesley Clark "from the left" is the painstakingly cut up and reassembled way in which some of his critics attempt to present the comments Wes Clark made in the London Times on April 10th 2003. The fact that every comment that Clark made in that Op-Ed that points out the problems with Bush's Iraq policy are surgically removed, often to the ludicrous extent of joining together phrases seperated by 13 paragraphs of text through the magic of three dots (such as... this) should be all the evidence needed to make anyone suspicious that the material being quoted from is being manipulated to fit someone's covert agenda. FAIR wasn't the source for the Frankenstein's monster version of Clark's Op-Ed, but they obviously ran with it here.

This comment is simply a flat out wrong assertion of an opinion:

"After the fall of Baghdad, any remaining qualms Clark had about the wisdom of the war seemed to evaporate"

And my above assertion is easily backed up simply by reading from the full source material that allegedly shows that Clark lost all qualms about the wisdom of the war. It is the absolutely most simple fact check one should always do if one is seeking Fairness and Accuracy In the Media, but F.A.I.R. didn't even bother to do that simplest of steps here.

First they extracted and commented on this from Clark:

"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."

Let me point out for starters that Clark's qualms never included any doubt that the U.S. military could invade and depose Hussein, that was never in question for Clark. What was in question for him was the wisdom of doing so, not our ability to do so. That is a classic bait and switch against Clark, implying his praise of a military strategy somehow shows he wavored on his opinion of going to war in the first place. Whether or not Clark had earlier expressed doubt about a certain military tactic is not the point to FAIR's piece and they know it. The point of the artical was to question whether Clark opposed invading Iraq when we did, not to go over Clark's expressed opinions on how such an invasion would best be managed if launched.

But that is the least of FAIR's inaccuracy here. What follows is a horrible job of cut and paste editing to create a wildly distorted image. Let's look at what FAIR chose not to quote, shall we? Like the sentance immediately following "Already the scent of victory is in the air" which just so happens to be "Yet a bit more work and some careful reckoning need to be done before we take our triumph." What's that? Do I detect an unreported qualm? In fact FAIR chose to look right past the next two paragraphs (numbers two and three of Clark's Op-Ed, which go on to detail with amazing foresight the problems that lay ahead for Bush's occupation of Iraq:

"In the first place, the final military success needs to be assured. Whatever caused the sudden collapse in Iraq, there are still reports of resistance in Baghdad. The regime’s last defenders may fade away, but likely not without a fight. And to the north, the cities of Tikrit, Kirkuk and Mosul are still occupied by forces that once were loyal to the regime. It may take some armed persuasion for them to lay down their arms. And finally, the Baath party and other security services remain to be identified and disarmed.

Then there’s the matter of returning order and security. The looting has to be stopped. The institutions of order have been shattered. And there are scant few American and British forces to maintain order, resolve disputes and prevent the kind of revenge killings that always mark the fall of autocratic regimes. The interim US commander must quickly deliver humanitarian relief and re-establish government for a country of 24 million people the size of California. Already, the acrimony has begun between the Iraqi exile groups, the US and Britain, and local people."

How does FAIR square those concerns from Clark with the subjective bias of their reporting? How do those statements support their assertion that "After the fall of Baghdad, any remaining qualms Clark had about the wisdom of the war seemed to evaporate"? They simply don't, that's how. They obvioulsy assume that the reader doesn't have access to the full original piece. Maybe they never looked at the full original piece themselves, which really would be unforgivable from an organization like FAIR that prides itself on accuracy and fairness.

FAIR fast forwards through Clark's Op-Ed piece to next cite this quote from it:

"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."

OK, lets rewind their tape a bit. What did they skip right over that directly preceded that comment by Clark? Here it is in it's full original context:

"As for the diplomacy, the best that can be said is that strong convictions often carry a high price. Despite the virtually tireless energy of their Foreign Offices, Britain and the US have probably never been so isolated in recent times. Diplomacy got us into this campaign but didn’t pull together the kind of unity of purpose that marked the first Gulf War. Relationships, institutions and issues have virtually all been mortgaged to success in changing the regime in Baghdad. And in the Islamic world the war has been seen in a far different light than in the US and Britain. Much of the world saw this as a war of aggression. They were stunned by the implacable determination to use force, as well as by the sudden and lopsided outcome.

Now the bills must be paid, amid the hostile image created in many areas by the allied action. Surely the balm of military success will impact on the diplomacy to come — effective power so clearly displayed always shocks and stuns. 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."

How can anyone defend such clearly biased selective editing as "fair"? Remember all of these quotes from F.A.I.R were stitched together to support their bold assertion that Clark lost all qualms about the Iraq invasion. So of course they had to ignore the part of Clark's Op-Ed where he said the folowing, becauase they disprove the contention that they were making:

"The real questions revolve around two issues: the War on Terror and the Arab-Israeli dispute. And these questions are still quite open. Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and others will strive to mobilize their recruiting to offset the Arab defeat in Baghdad. Whether they will succeed depends partly on whether what seems to be an intense surge of joy travels uncontaminated elsewhere in the Arab world. And it also depends on the dexterity of the occupation effort. This could emerge as a lasting humiliation of Iraq or a bridge of understanding between Islam and the West.

But the operation in Iraq will also serve as a launching pad for further diplomatic overtures, pressures and even military actions against others in the region who have supported terrorism and garnered weapons of mass destruction. Don’t look for stability as a Western goal. Governments in Syria and Iran will be put on notice — indeed, may have been already — that they are “next” if they fail to comply with Washington’s concerns."

Clark's Op-Ed was full of dire warnings about what could easily go wrong, and Clark was saying this at at time when other leading Democrats inside the United States, like John Edwards, were still saying that the United States was right to invade Iraq, and were still viewing it as a total victory; Mission Accomplished.

And nothing could be more blatently intentionally misleading than F.A.I.R. making this claim:

"Clark closed the piece with visions of victory celebrations here at home: "Let's have those parades on the Mall and down Constitution Avenue."

It nicely helped F.A.I.R. make its intended point to say Clark closed his piece that way, the only problem though is that it isn't true. Here is how Clark actually closed his Op-Ed:

"Is this victory? Certainly the soldiers and generals can claim success. And surely, for the Iraqis there is a new-found sense of freedom. But remember, this was all about weapons of mass destruction. They haven’t yet been found. It was to continue the struggle against terror, bring democracy to Iraq, and create change, positive change, in the Middle East. And none of that is begun, much less completed.

Let’s have those parades on the Mall and down Constitution Avenue — but don’t demobilize yet. There’s a lot yet to be done, and not only by the diplomats."

Clark closed his piece by saying "Mission Not Accomplished" after presenting a two page shopping list of qualms about the Bush invasion of Iraq. FAIR's piece was nothing more than a subjective opinion piece using the tools of progaganda. They should be embarassed by it.

Clark is right about U.S. military power in a straight out simple war where the objective is to defeat an enemy in battle. But Clark was never warning about a U.S. lack of military superiority. He was warning about the lack of a sane U.S. foreign policy, and the dangers that presents America with in the world, where the objective can't simply be deposing a foreign head of state and calling that a mission accomplished.



Actually I've written a lot more to refute attacks like this one, but this should be a sufficient start.