Wes Clark was prescient (again) with his 6/28/05 comments on Faux

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."

Wes Clark deemed a flake because of the following statements:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2093825 /
Bush was "warned" about 9/11: "President Bush didn't do his job as commander in chief in the early months of his administration. He was warned that the greatest threat to the United States of America was Osama Bin Laden, yet on the 11th of September in 2001, the United States had no plan for dealing with the threat posed by Osama Bin Laden. The ship of state was on autopilot.
(More to this statement in the article)
(Jan. 6, McKelvie Middle School, Bedford.)

Bush "never intended" to get Osama Bin Laden: "We bombed Afghanistan, we missed Osama Bin Laden, partly because the president never intended to put the resources in to get Osama Bin Laden. All along, right after 9/11, they'd made their mind up, I guess, that we were going to go after Saddam Hussein. That's what people in the Pentagon told me. And they capped the resources, stopped the commitment to Afghanistan, and started shifting to prepare to go after Saddam Hussein." (Jan. 6, McKelvie Middle School, Bedford.)

President Bush doesn't even want to find Bin Laden "Newsweek magazine says he's in the mountains of western Pakistan. And I guess if Newsweek could find him there, we could, too, if we wanted to." (Jan. 8, Havenwoods Heritage Heights senior center, Concord.)

There wasn't a single terrorist in Iraq before the war "The president was not and has not been held accountable yet for misleading the American people. He is continuing to associate Saddam, Iraq, and the problem of terrorism. Yet the only terrorists that are in Iraq are the people that have come there to attack us." (Jan. 7, Town House, Peterborough.)

Fifty-five million voters are "ill-informed" dupes of the Christian right "Now, there's one party in America that's made the United Nations the enemy. And I don't know how many of you have ever read that series of books that's published by the Christian right that's called the "Left Behind" series? Probably nobody's read it up here. But don't feel bad, I'm not recommending it to you. I'm just telling you that according to the book cover that I saw in the airport, 55 million copies have been printed. And in it, the Antichrist is the United Nations. And so there's this huge, ill-informed body of sentiment out there that's just grinding away against the United Nations." (Jan. 7, Fuller Elementary School, Keene.)

One of the reasons for Islam's problem "Young men in an Islamic culture cannot get married until they can support a family. No job, no marriage. No marriage, unhappy young men. They get real angry, they feel real frustrated, they feel real powerless. And a certain number of them are being exploited in the mosques by this recruiting network." (Jan. 8, Havenwoods Heritage Heights senior center, Concord.)

And in another article, same author justifies why he wrote the article....


The point of the piece, which was admittedly not clear, was to suggest that Clark may not be the "electable Dean" that his supporters believe he is. Both candidates have a propensity to make statements that range from impolitic to provocative to simply inaccurate. If you like Clark or Dean, you're predisposed to excuse these statements or to see them as courageous truth-telling. If you don't like them, you have a different reaction. I wanted to highlight this similarity between the two candidates, which belies the consensus that Clark is supported by careful centrists and Dean by angry liberals. I wish I had been more precise.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2093956 /

One of the reasons for Islam's problem "Young men in an Islamic culture cannot get married until they can support a family. No job, no marriage. No marriage, unhappy young men. They get real angry, they feel real frustrated, they feel real powerless. And a certain number of them are being exploited in the mosques by this recruiting network."

Page 148-
Within the United States, the case for war sold nevertheless through a combination of skilled public commmunication, fear, patriotism, and trust in the commander in chief. The Bush administration was on message, consistently delivering warnings and dropping hints. Sec. of State Colin Powell, who carried the enormous credibility both at home and abroad was the real arbiter. His authority silenced most of the retired military, like the retired General Norman Schwarzkopf and other moderates. There was trust in the President, too, as many Americans assumed that the administration simply knew more than it was sharing with congress and with the public. And there was pressure directed against the doubters by an administration quick to identify and threaten critics.

page 183-184
2001 marked a profound departure in U.S. Foreign policy. Coming to power in a disputed election, the Bush administration acted unambiguously to put a more unilateralist, balance-of-the power stamp on U.S. foreign policy. The United States withdrew from international efforts to address global warming, the Kyoto Treaty. The administration made clear that it would proceed with national missile defense regardless of the U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the South Korea-North Korea dialogue was essentially rejected, and a new proposal to focus the UN on tightening up sanctions against Iraq was dropped. Even before 9/11 it was clear that the U.S. foreign policy had changed tack.

Responding to events of 9/11, the Bush administration abandoned its "more humble foreign policy" (as described above). Overnight, U.S. foreign policy became not only unilateralist but moralistic, intensely patriotic, and assertive, planning military action against Iraq and perhaps other states in the Middle East, and intimating the New American Empire.

Page 200
We don't need the New American Empire. Indeed, the very idea of classic empire is obsolete. An interdependent world will no longer accept discriminatory dominance by one nation over others.