from the blogsite
http://www.theclarksphere.com/archives/000347.html#000347Bloody Sunday in the Press
On the most notorious Sunday in 1972, Northern Ireland was under the heavy boot of the British Army - rights of demonstration and free speech curtailed. A "young sprog" of a captain heard gun fire, decided he was being shot at, and "ran like fury".
"I have absolutely no reason to suppose that any of the 1 Para would have been using their weapons had there not been incoming rounds."
"As I sprinted acrost the waste ground, I had an absolutely firm impression that I was being shot at. What I thought was: 'Some bugger is firing at me'."
He thought "This is a bit hot," and stated he thought that there were multiple people firing. No weapons were found on the bodies of the 12 slain Catholic demonstrators.
The man who now leads British forces in Iraq is plagued by the scandal even today, as more charges surfaced in June.
The "he" here? Then Captain, now Sir Mike Jackson, who lost his head in 1972, and then again in 1999, and whose word is now being used to smear Wesley Clark. We've read this all before - the National Review tried it before. Strange that we are now again being treated to a story of the man his own troops call "The Prince of Darkness".
On July 3rd, the Republican News reported "Lord Saville is currently considering a request from lawyers for the families that General Mike Jackson be recalled to the inquiry for further questioning after serious discrepancies between his account of Bloody Sunday and that of Major Edward Loden, Command of Support Company, emerged during the latters evidence at the end of June. These discrepancies, argue the lawyers, strongly suggest that Jackson was involved in fabricating evidence in order to justify the killings on Bloody Sunday."
Jackson, if the document is correct, drew up lists of people to be shot, which is consistent with the extreme accuracy of the killing which took place - single bullet to the head shots. Jackson repeatedly denied - for 30 years - any decision to draw the IRA into a gun battle. The target list shows why this is probably true, there were already "targets".
And this is the man who The Nation wants us to take the word of. Next thing you know we will be reading them quote George W. Bush Jr. about how the Clinton policy of nation building was wrong, and that Iraq is the right way to do things: because Clark has been against Iraq since last summer - while Jackson is still 200% convinced that Iraq was "the right thing to do" and that it is being handled the right way.
It is Jackson's word that is at the root of all of these stories, no one has any other documentation, and all of them require people ignoring two inconvenient facts: it was Secretary General Solana who gave the Activation Order (ACTORD) for Clark to proceed - Clark could not have ordered deployment without it, and Jackson would not have needed to take matters to higher levels if Clark did not have authorization - and the plan that was put in place was, substantially Clark's. The last problem with stories attempting to attack Clark's judgment is that it was he who held the line on sectorizing Kosovo, which made the Russian presence constructive.
Sir Mike Jackson is, by all accounts, a tough as nails officer. His reputation from intelligence and the paratroopers and many assignments around the world indicates that he is the kind of man who likes his business. He was a big backer of the invasion of Iraq, and was a fountain of optimistic reports about how well the operation has been going.
It seems clear that certain people in the anti-war under any circumstances crowd have found common cause with the smear machine on the right wing against Wesley Clark, as they continue to repeat a charge which has been repeatedly been debunked on the record. They can dress Mike Jackson's hysteria up in as many guises as possible - but the record remains clear. Clark pushed, and when rebuffed, worked around it. Later, in this PBS interview, he explains his position:
PBS interview.
http://www.theclarksphere.com/archives/<br%20/>http://www.pbs.org/newshour/conversation/jan GEN. WESLEY CLARK: It was a surprising moment to me. It was Sunday the 13th of June, about 8:30 in the morning. And he said, "I'm not going to take your order to block these, this runway." And so we talked about it. He was extremely agitated and emotional and making all kinds of statements. So I said, "let's get your chief of defense," his boss in the British chain of command, "on the line." I talked to General Sir Charles Guthrie, the British chief of defense, and he said, "let me talk to Mike." And so I pass the phone over and then Mike handed the phone back to me. And the British chief of defense said, "well, I agree with Mike." And he says, "so does Hugh Shelton," the American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I was very surprised because I had gotten word from Washington that Washington supported, in fact, suggested that I block these runways and strongly supported how I did it, how I wanted to do it. So I called Hugh. It was about 3:00 in the morning in Washington, and I said, "well, you know, here is the problem and Guthrie says you support Jackson, not me. What... Do you support me or not?" Because you can't take actions in war without support of governments. He said, "well," he said, "I did have a conversation with Guthrie. I knew you were getting this order. Guthrie and I agreed we don't want a confrontation but I do support you." So I said, "well, then you've got a policy problem." And it really was a policy problem caused by the British government's differing perception than the American government's, and by Mike Jackson's perception of the situation.
MARGARET WARNER: What does this tell you about alliance warfare? I mean, that if push comes to shove, does the whole alliance command structure break down?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, only in... It tells you the same lesson we've always known about alliances, that if you are going to lead and you have the command positions, you have to back up that command position. You have to earn it by committing the resources. Now, in this case, although we had the majority of the aircraft and the air campaign, we had done our best to avoid taking a leadership role on the ground. The British had the vast majority of the forces. They were there first. They had the capital sector around Pristina and the Pristina Airport sector, and they had the commander on the ground. So it was going to be, except for the Apaches, it was all British troops at risk, and it was a British commander and therefore it was essentially a British operation under my command. It's the same thing that we would have found in the Second World War. Eisenhower was the supreme allied commander because the United States put the bulk of the forces in, not the Brits. In this case, because the United States didn't want to take the lead by committing its resources on the ground, when push came to shove, it was another country that actually set the policies.
So the questions raised by the smear pieces have been answered - Clark believed in allies at the time, and he believed in the chain of command, and he followed that chain of command. He believes in Allies now as well. Clark continued to rely on Sir Mike Jackson, sending him to negotiate face to face with Serbian commanders. Jackson continued on to be KFOR commander. Clearly, the two men, for whatever their differences over the Pristina airfield, did not decide the other was an unreliable colleague, and did not attempt to undercut or undermine the other's authority. It was a difference of tactical decision - Clark supported by his commanders and by Solana, Jackson by his superiors. The working out was not based on a larger decision about later negotiations, but over the working relationship between the US and the UK.
After all, if Clark's plan had been unacceptable, Solana could have simply withdrawn the "ACTORD", or Washington could have. Clearly both wanted the option in play in the negotiations, or one phone call could have stopped everything cold.
He had guidance for me. "I am recommending you move to Pristna airport as soon as possible," he (NATO Secretary General Javier Solana) said.
"Javier, I just want to be certain that you are comfortable that I have the authority to order this," I asked to be clear.
"Yes, of course you do. You have ACTORD," he said emphatically.
So I had NATO support, but I knew there was much more to be done before an operation like this could be executed.
Let's be clear who we are talking about here - Javier Solana was the Socialist former Foreign Minister of Spain, who had opposed his country's entry into NATO, and who, as Secretary General, had the authority to order Clark to do this. It was Jackson, and later the British, who decided against it. The plan eventually adopted, to block airspace and the roads was Clark's, not "Washington's". On the 11th of June Solana ordered air exercises over Kosovo as a way of making it clear to the Russians that NATO was not merely folding its tent and going home. In his statements Solana emphasized that "all military options remain open". So, on the record, Clark had the backing of NATO to implement the ACTORD of 12 June.
The Serbs and Russians cooperated to bring the Russian forces in, and Milosevic progressively filed away at the legal framework of the "Military Technical Agreement" - first from NATO lead, then to KFOR, then trying to replace this with "UN". The Russian tanks had "KFOR" painted on them before there was, in fact, a KFOR, for them to be part of. The hawkish assessment of The Russia Journal indicates the wire Clark was walking at the time - between those who saw it as an "empire building move", and those who wanted to do nothing. By keeping Clark's option in play, Cohen had a lever to move Gutherie on the matter, along the lines of: "Well, if you don't want to do anything, I'll just call up Wes and tell him to move in the choppers. You can field the questions as to why your commander couldn't do anything about it."
And this, not some hysterical accusations and hypotheticals, is the reality of the situation. NATO made a decision, but being an alliance of unanimous consensus, one of its key members refused. And since that member was the one providing the forces, its refusal carried that day. This is how the alliance works, and Clark is clearly, in his interview, comfortable with it.
Some articles make a further factual error: Ellis did not refuse, and Jackson, while troubled, began organizing the Apache mission that Clark ordered. There were several rounds of consultation, and in Waging Modern War Clark goes, in detail, about the diplomacy involved, and shows a much greater grasp of the intricacies than does Katrina vanden Heuvel. Her version in is pure fabrication.
Instead what happened is that Clark had Jackson block the roads to the airfield, and Clark asked other nations to deny overflight to the Russians. The Russians continued to demand a sector, continued to smuggle troops in through Serbia, and attempted to push the US out. It was a risky moment, because if the Russians had violated airspace, it would have required shooting down the incoming planes, or accepting a de facto partition of Kosovo with a Russian sector, with the result being a continued guerilla war and disintegration of what peace was managed. When the conflict was over - there was a flood of people back into Kosovo,
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