Wesley Clark Delivers Another Wow Performance - Newshounds

[CarolNYC]

I finally got around to reading this....Great job, Wes....

Warning to those who have a problem with it....Newshounds does some obvious gushing here.

Wesley Clark Delivers Another Wow Performance
Reported by Judy - August 01, 2006

It's one thing to be extremely intelligent, with a grasp of complex matters, an appreciation for historical context, and a raft of specialized knowledge. It's another to be able to communicate all that to an audience of average Americans. And it's still another to be able to do all that as a liberal on a Fox News show. But General Wesley Clark did it again Tuesday (August 1, 2006) in another appearance on "Dayside."

Clark, a former supreme allied commander for NATO and now a Fox News military analyst, gave a command performance just last week on Fox News, discussing the Israeli-Hezbollah crisis. He was back for a return engagement Tuesday, this time facing a potentially hostile studio audience.

(snip)

One of his best answers came in response to an audience member who insisted Israel is really a symbol of the free world, including the U.S., in fighting Hezbollah.

While Israel may be a unique country in the Middle East due to its level of literacy and strength of its democracy, Clark said, the interests of the U.S. and Israel are not identical.

"What the United States can do to advance our ideals, and I’m speaking as an American now because that’s who I am," Clark said.

"What we can do is we have to stand for what we believe in and our values. We don’t believe in reckless bombing. We believe in humanitarian assistance. We believe in ending quarrels by the peaceful settlement of disputes and we believe in the use of war only as a last resort. So we have to follow our own principles, and in the process we should help Israel, but we should also be helping the government of Lebanon and the innocent civilians all through the area."

"Dayside" followed Clark with other talking heads, including a debate on Iraq between conservative Cal Thomas and Democratic strategist Bob Beckel. How shallow everyone else seemed in comparison.

Wesley Clark is a top dog, without a doubt.

http://www.newshounds.us/2006/08/01/wesley_clark_delive...

Video and full transcript (the real one...Lord knows what kind of transcript Fox puts up on their site for something like this) is here:
http://securingamerica.com/node/1281

Worth a look....

[saltpoint]

1. I wonder how many people who heard the desperate Don Rumsfeld

today in the Senate hearing realize that someone like Wes Clark would be infinitely more qualified to advise a U.S. president on foreign policy.

Where Clark comes across as competent, sure-footed, field-tested and wide-ranging, Don Rumsfeld registers -- especially lately -- as desperate, confused, condescending, furtive, and disconnected from reality.

They're both high-IQ men. But Clark's a pro. I'd take Clark's clear day to Rumsfeld's dark back alley.

[CarolNYC]

4. No doubt, Old C

Can't deny, though, that I'm hoping that some of those people...well, a lot of those people, actually.....realize that someone like Wes Clark (well, not someone like him but he himself) would be quite qualified to be President himself, setting the foreign policy.

BTW, I saw Wes at a campaign event for Paul Aronsohn in NJ this week....He seems extremely worried about the damage this current bunch of lunatics is doing to the Constitution. '06 is key or we may lose the government as we know it...Pretty scary to see him so grim and concerned about it....

[saltpoint]

5. Wes could go for the top job, certainly, a job Rumsfeld wanted badly

one time far ago and didn't get.

Thank God.

Clark's likely correct to be concerned about this administration's dark intents, and I respect him all the more for speaking out against it and putting the urgency in plain talk. That's a plus for our side and further erosion of voter confidence in the Rethugs on various ballots.

I'm thinking we're in a good position -- with some very hard work still to come -- for a happy evening on Nov. 7th.

[CarolNYC]

13. Gee, I hope you're right about Nov 7

I don't even like to think about the consequences if we don't get at least one of the houses of Congress this year.....There's a joke post floating around about Bush cancelling the '08 elections but, I gotta tell you, there are some days when I'm thinking it's a possiblity with this one if only he thought he could get away with it....

Plus, if the voters don't throw the bums out now with the mess that's going on, I will lose all hope and all faith in humanity....

[saltpoint]

18. There's too many old-timers in the Senate to let Bush do anything that

extreme.

He gambled his legacy on Iraq and he lost.

He's embarrassing and volatile, I agree, but he's over.

[Tinksrival]

7. You saw Wes! I'm jealous!

I haven't heard Wes in person since NCCM in Little Rock. He is always so open and accessible to his supporters. He makes time and tells it like it is. He talked to us in a basement of a bar in Chicago about Iran a year and a half ago. I wish he could swing through the windy city again.
Did you or someone do a write up in the Clark DU group or on the CCN?
I know Wes must be very grim with all thats going on.
I know he is doing everything he can to save this ship.
We have to win!

[CarolNYC]

14. Hey Tinksrival

I hope he swings your way again soon too...

Actually, he's in my area for a number of events these days...Tuesday was a couple of events in NJ, next Wednesday he's at his buddy and my Congressman Charlie Rangel's birthday party with Jack Murtha and others, and the next Sunday he's in the Hamptons for a fundraiser for a bunch of guys. I get to go to Charlie's birthday but will be away for the Hamptons thing...The Hamptons are a real pain to get to from the city without a vehicle anyway...but beautiful.

Here's my writeup of the fundraiser from Tuesday at CCN:
http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/7750

Here are two write ups of the free rally he did at an American Legion post before that:
http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/7759
http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/7756

[Tinksrival]

19. Thanks Carol!

A nice way to start the day!

[Bucky]

11. Actually, I think Rumsfeld is more qualified to advise THIS president.

Clark tends to ask his audiences to think. Any conversation he has about policy quickly veers away from platitudes and starts to assess concrete goals, targets, and the logistics for achieving them. I just don't think Bush could follow what goes on in a Clark conversation.

[CarolNYC]

15. Good point Bucky...

Reminds me of Bush at the WHCD during Colbert's piece....I kept thinking, I bet he has no idea what Steven means but he can tell it's not good. haha!

What a dunce we have for a President.

[saltpoint]

17. I hold with CarolNYC on Bush being a dunce. She's made the right

call and we're stuck with the little monkey for a couple more years.

But one of these days he'll be out of there and how fine it will be to have a grown-up back in the White House.

[Doctor_J]

2. Yeah, I wonder why Stupid doesn't ask Clark to join

the Cabinet. He makes silly offers to Nelson and Lieberman who'd have to give up a D Senate seat to take it. Why not ask Clark?

[FrenchieCat]

3. Cause the type of advise Wes would have, they would not want to hear....

Because they are not interested in making the world "safer" in reality......they just say that because it sounds good, meanwhile, they are creating the havoc that is what they really want anyways!

[girl gone mad]

6. ding, ding.

And Clark would be a fool on the order of Colin Powell to consider any such offers.

[Donna Zen]

9. Well there ya go

Wes Clark is nobody's fool.

Nevertheless, we should remember that Powell worked on the original draft of PNAC in 1992. Wes said that he was on a conference panel with Rummy and Powell back in the mid-nineties. Clark started talking about regional dialog, when those two started talking empire. Clark said he couldn't believe it: wrong...wrong...wrong. Powell isn't innocent as his PR makes him out to be.

A strategic dunce! That is what the General recently called bush. Gosh, he's always saying that we should stay away form name calling...ha ha ha but it is a zinger. Strategic dunce.

[Sparkly]

8. That's My General!!!

He IS "THE General," and I love the first lines in the article...

"It's one thing to be extremely intelligent, with a grasp of complex matters, an appreciation for historical context, and a raft of specialized knowledge. It's another to be able to communicate all that to an audience of average Americans. And it's still another to be able to do all that as a liberal on a Fox News show."

Those three things sums up a lot of my support for him.

First, he's INCREDIBLY smart, both in terms of knowledge and in terms of critical thinking. Absolutely nothing short of amazing -- I believe he's genius-level brilliant.

Second, he's a TEACHER. That's an important, special quality and skill. He can take all that complex knowledge and thought in his mind and boil it down to words his audience can understand, without "dumbing down" ANYthing.

Those first two were the elements I saw in him at a New Hampshire townhall meeting years ago that left me astonished and amazed -- "impressed" isn't a strong enough word. He wrapped his mind around each question, giving an answer that was informative AND thoughtful, comprehensive AND clear, circling the topic to touch on all the facts and considerations, all the issues and the factors to be considered about them, finishing the circle in a perfect, lucid conclusion. It reminded me of the way Bill Clinton sometimes answered questions, or the way my best professors sometimes did -- but he was that knowledgeable and clear on EVERY question, addressing EVERY issue thrown at him, and just surpassed them all. Absolutely phenomenal.

Third, he's a FIGHTER. His speaking on Fox is part of that. He's honing his skills, learning the battlefield, and he's sharper now than ever. He can deflect and stay focused, attack and stay cool, hit his targets dead-on and leave them frustrated, trying to find a counter-attack.

He is ONE in a generation, if that.

[wiley]

10. The full transcript is superb!

WoW!

[info being]

12. Now if he can prove that he doesn't mean that...

...to the Zionist powers-that-be, he might be allowed a position in our government. That's the best Democrat, isn't it, someone who speaks like this but doesn't mean a word?

[jonnyblitz]

21. ..

[Dinger]

16. I Am So Grateful For All That Wes Has Done And Continues To Do

Thanks for posting Carol.

[deaniac21]

20. He's done a little bombing himself....

http://www.iacenter.org/bosnia/yugo_clark.htm

[Clark2008]

22. Yep - and knows it should only be used as a LAST resort.

Unlike those who have never served and don't understand the horrors of war.

[deaniac21]

23. If you are going to comment please read the link first.

[Jai4WKC08]

26. "If you are going to comment please read the link first."

What an obvious waste of time that would be.

[dogman]

24. And saved over a million people.

You choose to support Milosevic. Hmm, your link tells me more about you than Clark.

[Dinger]

28. Actually, I Think It Was 1.5 Million Ethnic Albanians

I don't have a link right now, but I will look. I think I heard this on a 60 minutes II interview.

[Sopianae]

25. That book review is total bull shit.

I read it. OK? It's written by someone who is obviously has a chip on his shoulder.

I grew up in Hungary and lived there until 1999. I saw up close what went on in neighboring Yugoslavia before and during the breakup. It wasn't pretty. It was all about Serbia trying to retain control over the territories of former Yugoslavia with the most brutal methods. Hungary received waves of refugees fleeing Serbian ethnic cleansing and war for almost a decade. Heck, my hometown Pecs (my user name Sopianae was the name of my home town at the time of the Roman Empire) was occupied by Serbian forces for two years in the beginning of the 20th century. In Serbia, there was a movement to revive Greater Serbia which included my hometown in Hungary. We lived in fear for a decade because of Milosevic. Everyone said that no sane person would widen the conflict to include Hungary (especially that Hungary was on the verge of joining NATO). Alas, Milosevic was no sane person. He had to be stopped. He should have been stopped much earlier but the European countries were paralyzed and the US was too reluctant, too.

I am grateful for everything Clark has done.

[Tom Rinaldo]

27. Pro Nationalist Serb Propaganda

You would do well reading what Sopianae posted on this thread, she actually lived in that region through those times. Whenever you read a hit piece against Clark that stresses how the Kosovo conflict was pushed because of Anti-Serb attitudes and Anti-Serb propaganda, get a clue. You are reading Pro Serbian propaganda. Genuine peace activists may be critical of any number of military actions, but they don't line up behind a Pro Serbia banner lauding Milosevic.

That "review" is laced with major contradictions that may not be apparent to some without a tiny bit of research, which of course is what the author is counting on. The reviewer is blaming Clark for wanting to utilize close in air combat in Kosovo with Apache helicopters, and blaming Clark for threatening to introduce ground forces into the conflict, while also blaming Clark for civilian casualties from high altitude bombing, which places civilians at much greater risk than the options Clark pressed for. That is just barely brushing the surface of this distorted revisionist propagandist "history".

The reviewer makes a big point out of this: "Clark doesn't explain that U.S. imperialist interests are greatest in these areas--oil in the Middle East and a strategic land base in Asia--and that a ruling-class consensus backs these war plans. He complains that Pentagon reluctance to move troops and materiel from these two areas made it harder for him to wage war in Europe."

Stop and think about that for a second, OK? He just said Clark was the guy battling the Pentagon to get them to pull military resources AWAY from defending "our" Middle East Oil and toward stopping the genocide of muslims in Europe. Of course this reviewer is one of the Milosevic apologists who deny the genocide that was being launched by Milosevic against Albanian muslims in Kosovo, he conveniently shrugs it off as if Clark simply wanted to fight a war in Europe instead. I'm sure this reviewer would also deny the ethnic cleansing that Greater Serbian nationalists pursued in Bosnia. And there's no mention either of course of all that Oil that must be in Rwanda that made Clark buck the Pentagon a couple of years earlier in his career to advocate for U.S. intervention there to stop the wanton slaughter of nearly a million innocents. So I am not surprised that this reviewer doesn't talk about the enemies Clark made in the Pentagon by continuing to buck their plans to keep all of our military safely hunkered down protecting America's Oil sources rather than saving innocent human lives. That had a wee bit to do with Clark's early retirement you know, AFTER he won that war.

About 50 years earlier I'm sure this guy could have written a nice pro war mongering pro imperialist smear against General Eisenhower to for fighting in and occupying large parts of Europe. Your handle includes "Deaniac" in it. By any chance are you one of those Dean supporters who hold Al Gore in high regard? Ask Good old Al sometime what he thought about the Kosovo conflict. After all, he was only Vice President at the time.

[Texas_Kat]

29. How many Democrats would get applause from this:

From the even-more-rabid-Foxies-than-normal Dayside audience:

"You know, in most of human history people don't agree, and it's a question of how you resolve the disagreements. We've got long-standing disagreements with Iran. I've been one of those who advocated talking to Iran, and I've said it publicly for the last four years. The administration hasn't. As a result, now when it comes into the fight, it's very difficult to go to Iran. But yes, Israel represents a standard of freedom, a standard of literacy, a standard of Democracy which is unique in the region. But what the United States can do to advance our ideals - and I'm speaking as an American now, because that's who I am.

What we can do is, we have to stand for what we believe in and our values. We don't believe in reckless bombing. We believe in humanitarian assistance. We believe in ending quarrels by the peaceful settlements of disputes, and we believe in the use of war only as a last resort.

So, we have to follow our own principles, and in the process we should help Israel, but we should also be helping the government of Lebanon and the innocent civilians all through the area.

Applause ..... A-Frigging-Amazing

Clark seems to be the one who can 'talk owls out of trees".

[Donna Zen]

30. We...we...we...we...

The other day I was reading a diary at Kos by a possible 08 contender. What struck me was the number of times the writer used the words "I" and "me" and never once used "we." Then I did a search and checked Wes Clark's last diary at Kos...we, we, we, our, we,...

When I look over this statement, it is just beautiful. The initial introduction of the answer does give us his "I" opinion without any hedging. But then he switches the pov to we, and invites the audience in: we are Americans, we believe....all positive with the criticism only implied. He helps his listeners resolve their quandary of wanting to support Israel, while disagree with what is currently going on. Then if you follow this thinking to its logical conclusion, it is bush's failure to pursue a sound foreign policy by failing to talk, that has caused the current instability. More importantly, the listener now can even see that is bush that has caused their personal discomfort.

Sometimes I think that Wes Clark has much more time to think than most people. These answers are always so clear.

[Texas_Kat]

31. Not more time to think.... WKC just thinks more clearly

and grasps the whole strategic picture while some of the others are still struggling with place-names.

One of the things I have heard Clark refer to is the concept that the Army teaches you that everyone must depend on everyone else -- sometimes even survival depends on it.

It's not an "Army of One" (that phrase seems to irritate him a bit), the Army requires the ultimate form of teamwork. It's all about "we".

Rogues who look out only for themselves wind up getting their buddies very very dead. It becomes second nature to look out for your team. Clark's team is the American people.

[Tom Rinaldo]

33. In more ways than one Texas_Kat

It's in his training, but it's also inherent to who he is, which is why Clark chose a career of service to our nation that didn't offer good pay, that required his family to move dozens of times, that literally put his physical life at risk both as a young man, and as a middle age man. And while Clark grew up in the South, now he is a uniquely American politician, rather than a regional one. Often when we think about a potential Presidential Race we ask questions like "Can another New Englander win ?", or "Would a Californian seem too Liberal?" or "Must Democrats run a Southern Democrat to have any chance of winning in the South, and do they carry the same appeal in Northern states?". In a real sense Wes Clark's identity isn't tied to one State over another, to one region over another. In his career spanning several decades Wes Clark always worked and fought for the American People. He didn't represent the interests of the citizens of one state, potentially against those of another. Clark always worked and sacrificed for America's interests. Wes Clark doesn't have regional barriers to transcend when he travels around our country. As you said, "Clark's team is the American people."

[dogman]

32. Clark teaches leadership.

From his speech at Ripon College, for their Opening Convocation on Sept. 14, 2004:

“Finally,” says Clark, “I hope you’ll be committed to others because leadership is about working for others. It’s about setting aside the self and giving to others. And I think you have
to practice it in your daily lives.”

The full speech is available at this link:
http://www.ripon.edu/news/magazine/Winter2005 /

It is a great read.