Reply #34: Uh, what about the rest Patriot?

[Tom Rinaldo]

If the part you did copy starts with "He is intense and aggressive, driven and smart, and always focused. But, according to reports, he is also stubborn and abrasive, overbearing and self-righteous, and no profile of Clark seems complete without these characterizations." Even the source you cited acknowledges that there is another part of the profile. Why did you leave out the few sentances that preceded those, to save space? Specifically:

"There is no question that Clark's 34-year military career was impressive. First in his class at West Point, awarded the Purple Heart and Silver Star in Vietnam, he helped negotiate the end of the conflict in Bosnia in 1995, and ran a war in the Balkans four years later that did not result in the loss of a single American life."

Yes Clark is complex, and so are jounalists who all want to earn their stripes by standing up to their subjects and wielding their pens aggressively. We have all seen that dynamic. According to some reports perhaps Clark seemed that way. According to many other reports I have read, by soldiers and officers who served with and under Clark, the picture is very different. Those "reports" aren't as "newsworthy" though. Where can you find such reports you might ask? Try Veterans for Clark for starters, they collect them there. Or watch "An American Son", find some computer with a broadband connection and watch it. Plenty of big brass not afraid to shine on Wes with the camera running.

If you go through Clarks records (he's released them) you will find that the Army frequently assigned him to turn around units and programs that were under performing in some critical ways. I read a comment by a General that said just that. The Pentagon kept giving Clark those tasks because he kept succeeding in turning around problem situations. He didn't do so by being soft and accepting about failure. Even his critics conceeded that Clark got the exact results desired and expected.

I remember reading on a Clark blog one time about a conversation a Clark backer had had with an officer who served under Clark one time and did feel that Clark was overly demanding. First the backer talked about the management style of Bill Gates (management style, not overall world view ethics and values) and several other specific CEO's of highly successful and competitive Corporations, and both the backer and the former officer recognized the same demanding leadership traits in all of those men, that Clark was accused of having. Then this guy asked the officer about how well the unit Clark was commanding at the time ranked in the standard performance reviews it was subjected to by outside the unit evaluaters. The officer replied "we always got the top rating of any similar unit we could be compared to." The ex-officer was then asked what do you think is most important for a President to achieve? The end of the blog comments had the backer saying he thought he won a new supporter for Clark's Presidential run.

As for the Shelton/Cohen related stuff, that one has gone around here a number of times by now, don't you think? The short and simple answer is: Clark was right and they were wrong.