Reply #90: I'll Answer to your post, with some hard feelings.....

[FrenchieCat]

I'll let Tom Rinaldo's posts do the talking, since he bothered to answer the same stuff you just posted fully and then some in a three part answer. The question becomes will you be fair enough to read it, or will you just continue to be patronizing to us as though we were born yesterday?

My ass marched out there against the war two fucking times! I followed all there was to follow!

In terms of the rancor, please note the difference, you ask a question and we write a book as an answer. We ask a question about Edwards, and you say "he said sorry". I mean, just contrast and compare. One stood up when few were and yet he gets questioned. The other sat down, no...stooped down, and he's going to the White House if you have it your way.

God will get revenge on this; I'll just work for some justice.

Tom Rinaldo (1000+ posts) Sun Nov-26-06 11:07 AM
Response to Reply #92
95. Your post jumps like a time machine all around the calendar
From before the IWR to after Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" I will be glad to respond, but to be more coherent than what I am responding to, I need to do so in multiple posts.

First regarding Clark's position prior to the invasion and his position regarding the IWR (I'll deal with the blatent distortion regarding Clark's comments in London after the invasion next):

Clark never said that there were no circumstances possible under which he could support war with Iraq, no leading Democrat said that; not Gore, not Dean, not Kennedy, not Wellstone, not Kerry, not Edwards. Back in 2002 none of them knew as much about Hussein's possible intentions to expand his WMD programs as they wanted to. Virtually all experts world wide back then assumed Iraq had some WMD. Clark thought Iraq probably had some poison gas and maybe some anthrax and such stockpiled, but Clark still testified before Congress that he saw no serious imminent treat from Iraq to the United States, and without that, no war against Iraq could be justified. In other words, Clark testified that the United States had plenty of time in which to work with the world community to come up with an internationally agreed upon program to determine what if any real threat Iraq posed to the world. During the same time span Clark also began to blow the whistle on PNAC's plans to remake the Middle East into democracies by force. In other words Clark was exposing the real reason why Bush was in such a rush to attack Iraq.

So yes, Clark believed that new United Nations resolutions regarding Iraq were needed, and that an effort was also needed to enforce the old ones, which as I'm sure you remember involved a program of United Nations weapons inspectors inside of Iraq, inspectors that Iraq had kicked out years before. Clark felt that the U.S. Congress had a legitimate role to play in providing leverage to those United Nations efforts. All leading Democrats were on the same page regarding this, including the men I list above. The debate centered on exactly what type of Resolution Congress should pass.

So, to cut to the chase then, regarding the question of whether or not Clark really opposed the Iraq war all along. Do you believe every word you see a New York Times reporter put in print, over the word of the Democrat being discussed? I think we can all name some New York Times Reporters, not to mention those working for other media outlets, who carried some water for the Bush Administration regarding Iraq back in 2003/2004. For example, does the name Judith Miller ring a bell? The NY Times Reporter in question for the original story that called Clark's IWR position into question, Adam Nagourney, is quite questionable himself, having written a number of distorted stories that always put leading Democrats in a bad light.

The real point of contention is this; Clark says that he said during the interview in question, that he would have supported "An" Iraq War Resolution, which instead got reported as "The" Iraq War Resolution. In the days leading up to the vote that approved "the" IWR, several more restrictive versions were under consideration in the U.S. Senate also, that would have made Bush come back to the Senate for a final go ahead vote to attack Iraq for example. Clark was in contact with Senator Levin and others prior to the final vote working together on a more restrictive IWR that Clark would have supported in order to increase leverage to get Hussein to cooperate with UN Resolutions. That is the IWR Clark meant. That is what Clark says he was talking about during the interview in question.

Those who don't like Clark are willing to call him a liar on that, and that is exactly what you have to conclude in order to believe that Clark supported the actual IWR that passed, that Clark is lying, despite all the evidence piled up below here, and much more, that shows that Wes Clark CONSISTENTLY argued against an attack on Iraq unless an imminent threat was shown to exist and all other options to deal with Iraq were thoroughly exhausted. At the very worse Clark get “caught” not being careful enough with his words during a casual interview with a reporter. It after all happened during Clark’s first week in politics. He chalks it up as a rookie gaffe. Clark’s learned a lot since then about how the media and political opponents operate.

In order to believe that Clark supported the IWR that passed the Senate, you would have to believe the same media sources that hyped the evidence of yellow cake uranium going to Iraq and all of the other pre-war hysteria hype over Clark's own word. Instead I ask you to consider all of this evidence below that supports Clark's position (compiled by CarolNYC):

Here is the text of Paul Wellstone's Senate floor speech regarding the IRW.
http://www.wellstone.org/archive/article_detail.aspx?it...

The quote about Wes from that speech is:

"We have succeeded in destroying some Al Qaida forces, but many of its operatives have scattered, their will to kill Americans still strong. The United States has relied heavily on alliances with nearly 100 countries in a coalition against terror for critical intelligence to protect Americans from possible future attacks. Acting with the support of allies, including hopefully Arab and Muslim allies, would limit possible damage to that coalition and our anti-terrorism efforts. But as General Wes Clark, former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe has recently noted, a premature go-it-alone invasion of Iraq "would super-charge recruiting for Al Qaida."

Here's the text of Ted Kennedy's speech before the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies regarding the Iraq War in Sept 2002, in which he references Wes' testimony a few times.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/14195

Here are the passages about Gen Clark:

"A largely unilateral American war that is widely perceived in the Muslim world as untimely or unjust could worsen not lessen the threat of terrorism. War with Iraq before a genuine attempt at inspection and disarmament, or without genuine international support -- could swell the ranks of Al Qaeda sympathizers and trigger an escalation in terrorist acts. As General Clark told the Senate Armed Services Committee, it would "super-charge recruiting for Al Qaeda."

General Hoar advised the Committee on September 23 that America's first and primary effort should be to defeat Al Qaeda. In a September 10th article, General Clark wrote: "Unilateral U.S. action today would disrupt the war against Al Qaeda." We ignore such wisdom and advice from many of the best of our military at our own peril.
....................
General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, testified before the Armed Services Committee on September 23 that Iran has had closer ties to terrorism than Iraq. Iran has a nuclear weapons development program, and it already has a missile that can reach Israel.
........
In our September 23 hearing, General Clark told the Committee that we would need a large military force and a plan for urban warfare. General Hoar said that our military would have to be prepared to fight block by block in Baghdad, and that we could lose a battalion of soldiers a day in casualties. Urban fighting would, he said, look like the last brutal 15 minutes of the movie "Saving Private Ryan."

Here's the transcript of the Larry King show where Ted Kennedy had this to say:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/20/lkl.01.h...

"KENNEDY: Well, I'm on the Armed Services Committee and I was inclined to support the administration when we started the hearings in the Armed Services Committee. And, it was enormously interesting to me that those that had been -- that were in the armed forces that had served in combat were universally opposed to going.

I mean we had Wes Clark testify in opposition to going to war at that time. You had General Zinni. You had General (INAUDIBLE). You had General Nash. You had the series of different military officials, a number of whom had been involved in the Gulf I War, others involved in Kosovo and had distinguished records in Vietnam, battle-hardened combat military figures. And, virtually all of them said no, this is not going to work and they virtually identified...

KING: And that's what moved you?

KENNEDY: And that really was -- influenced me to the greatest degree. And the second point that influenced me was in the time that we were having the briefings and these were classified. They've been declassified now. Secretary Rumsfeld came up and said "There are weapons of mass destruction north, south, east and west of Baghdad." This was his testimony in the Armed Services Committee.

And at that time Senator Levin, who is an enormously gifted, talented member of the Armed Services Committee said, "Well, we're now providing this information to the inspectors aren't we?" This is just before the war. "Oh, yes, we're providing that." "But are they finding anything?" "No."

Because the answer was because they're moving things, because when we tell the team they're all infiltrated by Saddam's people and they're leaking that so that's the reason we're not finding anything.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2984516&mesg_id=2987205

Tom Rinaldo (1000+ posts) Sun Nov-26-06 12:07 PM
Response to Reply #92
98. My reply Part II
Edited on Sun Nov-26-06 12:10 PM by Tom Rinaldo
Regarding this sentence: "As time wore on, Clark's reservations seemed to give way". The key word is "seemed" which in context was a fair use of that word since that "seems" to be how it "seemed" to the person writing it, who had the good sense to at least acknowledge that it was a subjective opinion about Clark's views rather than one established by clear facts. This quote by Clark on CCN was highlighted by the writer:

"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."

First it is important to remember that Clark was at that point a non political military national security commentator. We are so used to Clark as he is now, openly political and partisan, that we expect him to express his own opinions about what is right and what is wrong, but that was not the role given him by CCN. Clark's role there was to help viewers make sense out of why what was going on in the world at the time that it was actually going on, not to express opinions about whether it should be going on. Despite that, Clark did preface his comments by noting his personal disagreement with Bush's policy and actions. It's almost amusing, do people on DU realize that CCN was getting flack from the Right about letting Wes Clark do commentary for them at the time, because he wasn't backing Bush up every step of the way?

When Clark said "But just assuming that we're here at this point" he was describing the point at which Bush had already told the world he was abandoning the United Nations approach and it was clear as glass in what Bush was saying that his mind was made up about what he was going to do next if Sadaam Hussein didn't leave Iraq, which is what the Bush Administration was pushing for in the final weeks before the invasion. Clark was saying that Bush had already cast his lot in favor of the invasion and Bush was going to have to procede without depending on further support that might well not be forthcoming from some traditional allies that the U.S. had counted on in the past.

It's not much different with this quote:

"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."

Again Clark was not in a role where he was free to advise on the wisdom of the approach that Bush was taking, Clark had already done that in front of the United States Congress in testimony that I linked to in my first reply to you. He thought Bush's policy was a giant mistake and he said so then. Again this is commentary about something that is plain out a done deel, Clark is only talking about how the chips were likely to fall as a result. That was his job on CCN. This is a problem about taking spontaneous live commentary out of context and spinning it like a policy position. Words like "the rest of the world's got to get with us", that wasn't Clark's position, that was his reading of the fait accompli that Bush was presenting the world with. If he had carefully been choosing words for a policy address he might have said "the rest of the world's got to deal with what the United States is doing". In fact that is what the rest of his actual comment goes on to imply.

The United States literally was changing the facts on the ground inside Iraq. Would the UN be willing to come into Iraq after the invasion and take on a serious role in the transition back to Iraq independence? Would the UN take a leading role in helping Iraq rebuild? Would the UN help look for WMD or help exercise temporary control of Iraq's Oil? As it turned out Bush didn't want the UN to take any serious role in post invasion Iraq, but that wasn't clearly known at the time Clark commented.

There's no mystery about Clark's belief about Hussein having WMD, and here is where the source you cite begins to jump the tracks by throwing out a complete red herring. Clark always thought Hussein had some WMD; WMD like left over poisen gas, not nukes. There is no shift of Clark's position here. Clark testified before Congress that the fact that Hussein almost certainly had some WMD did not equate with a justification for attacking Iraq. Lots of nations have WMD. We do, Iran does, North Korea does, China does, etc. etc. Clark thought we would find some WMD in Iraq but he did not think we should have invaded when we did because of them. It is a logical fallacy to tie Clark's thinking that there was WMD inside Iraq with support for the invasion. That is a link Bush made, not Clark.

On to writing Part 3...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2984516&mesg_id=2987286

Tom Rinaldo (1000+ posts) Sun Nov-26-06 01:21 PM
Response to Reply #92
104. My Reply Part 3
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.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2984516&mesg_id=2987365