While Bush in Town fundraising, Wes Clark Steals the show!

Clark Speaks Out on New Torture Rules
In an address at UCLA, the retired general lambastes the Bush administration for challenging the Geneva Convention.
By James Ricci, Times Staff Writer
October 3, 2006

Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, speaking to UCLA faculty and students Monday, said that observing the Geneva Convention is crucial to America's interests and its ability to mobilize other countries for collective efforts.
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Recent congressional action authorizing the administration to try terrorism suspects before military tribunals and banning torture — while not prohibiting specific coercive techniques — will not silence the debate over the Geneva Convention, he said. The trials of the suspects will raise questions, he said: "What coercive tactics were used? How reliable was the information" thus obtained?

"It's going to bring everything back to the surface," Clark said.
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"It was America that led to the creation of the Geneva Convention," he said, "and now we're walking away from it, from the very values we espoused?"
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Clark said experience shows that coercive tactics against detainees tend to break only those who are undisciplined or uncommitted to their causes, and that such tactics often result in unreliable information given in the hope of stopping the abusive treatment. By contrast, he noted, prime Al Qaeda suspects tend to be "hard and tough."

The way to deal with them, he said, is not to apply coercion but to seek to change their minds. Yemeni authorities, he added, "actually bring imams in and try to deprogram them and challenge their interpretation of Islam. Eventually, they blurt out everything — and you can believe them."

Clark said the Bush administration's indifference to public opinion in other countries about U.S. violations of accepted international standards makes it difficult for leaders of those countries to collaborate with America.

"It's bad, bad policy for a legitimate state to mistreat people in its power," he said.

"If you can't move French public opinion, you can't expect their political leaders to sign on the bottom line. We have an international constituency, and that's what we've lost."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-clark3oct03,1,2590358.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

Democrats Use Bush's Visit to Draw Attention to Campaigns

Rep. John Doolittle's Democratic challenger, Charles Brown, is using President Bush's visit to draw attention to his own campaign.

The Achilles' heel for Democrats is the perception that they are soft on national security, so Brown brought out the Democrats' biggest gun, former NATO commander Gen. Wesley Clark, to stump for his campaign.

Clark took Bush, Doolittle and the entire Republican party to task on the war on terror.

"They are more concerned with self-aggrandizement than with providing the kinds of checks and balances that they are required to provide by the United States Constitution," Clark said. "And you know who I'm talking about -- including the man who is the incumbent in this region. Ladies and gentlemen, he hasn't done his job for the people of this district or the people of the USA."

Clark appeared with Brown Monday night at a campaign rally in front of the State Capitol.

Democrats in Rep. Richard Pombo's 11th District say Bush would not have come to Stockton if Pombo's campaign wasn't in trouble. A poll released Monday by a Democratic pollster shows challenger Jerry McNerney is leading Pombo 48-46 percent with 6 percent undecided.

Pombo's camp, according to Stockton's newspaper, The Record, dismisses the poll.
http://www.news10.net/storyfull2.aspx?storyid=20434