Wow! (From a Salon interview w/Clark...)

[sfecap]

Someone was nice enough to supply a link to this article in another thread. Dated March 23, and done by Jake Tapper, it is for the most part an enlightening article on Clark and his views on the Iraq invasion. However, in response to a question about people he likes in the * admin here is the question and his answer:

(snip)

(Tapper) "Of the people who are running this war, from Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld and Powell on down, in terms of the political appointees, are there are any who you particularly like who you would work with again, hypothetically, in some ... "

(Clark) "I like all the people who are there. I've worked with them before. I was a White House Fellow in the Ford administration when Secretary Rumsfeld was White House chief of staff and later Secretary of Defense, and Dick Cheney was the deputy chief of staff at the White House and later the chief.

Paul Wolfowitz I've known for many, many years. Steve Hadley at the White House is an old friend. Doug Feith I worked with very intensively during the time we negotiated the Dayton Peace Agreement; he was representing the Bosnian Muslims then, along with Richard Perle. So I like these people a lot. They're not strangers. They're old colleagues."

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/03/24/clark/index2.html

Whoa. This creeps me out. Seriously.

Obviously, this is only one question from a lengthy article. I would encourage everyone to read it because Clark says some very good stuff about Iraq, *'s plan there, and foreign policy in general.

I am very disturbed that Wolfowitz and Feith are considered "colleagues" by Clark. These men are animals and thugs who kill for profit. They are scum. Colleagues? Really? Please say it ain't so.

Please?

[Evanstondem]

1. You can't always choose your colleagues

I work with some colleagues whom I dislike, and others that I like personally even though they're Republicans.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. First off you do not reach the rank of Four Star

by not playing politics

Second it gives you a hint at how long these animals have been
around the DC power circle.

Just an observation.

[Romberry]

33. You said it!

No one reaches the rank of general officer without playing the game. No one in this day and age anyway. I like Clark but I spent my short military career at a base that does nothing but train officers from squadron officers right up through Air War College. If you don't buy into the intertwined military industrial complex, you don't see two stars or three stars, much less four.

Clark has the advantage of hindsight and he may reject the system he once worked to the highest rank and commands but I need to see some proof of this.

There have been no generals in the White House since Ike and Ike warned us of what was to come. Does Clark see it too? Will he address it or will it remain the elephant in the living room?

[Classical_Liberal]

3. Alas he is a Washington insider

and nobody with that status will say that while those two still have power there. That would include all the democrats including Kucinich.


Here's more from the interview on Wolfowitz Perle et all..



Do you disagree with them on their worldview?

I disagreed with them on some specific aspects. I would not have gone after the war on terror exactly as did and I laid that out in the . But I also know there's no single best plan. You have to pick a plan that might work and make it work. That means you've got to avoid the plans with the fatal flaws. This administration came into office predisposed to use American troops for war fighting and to realign American foreign policy so it focused on a more robust, more realistic view of the world than the supposedly idealistic view of the previous administration.

But the views that President Bush espoused recently at the American Enterprise Institute, if his predecessor had espoused that view he'd have been hooted off the stage, laughed at, accused of being incredibly idealistic about the hard-nosed practical politics of the Middle East. So this is an administration that's moving in a certain direction, and now that that's the direction they've picked they've got to make it work. Like everybody else, I hope they'll be successful. It's too important; we can't afford to fail.

[TakebackAmerica]

4. Hmm...Just wondering

Do you spend your time digging for dirt on Clark?

[sfecap]

6. No, actually a Clark supporter gave me the link...

There is some very good stuff in the interview, but this is apalling.

You may not be bothered by it, whatever.

Read the interview if you support Clark. It's very good.

[Classical_Liberal]

9. I think you just cherry pick which is why I also

recommend reading the whole thing. I posted it by the way.

[sfecap]

11. Thanks for posting it.

I'm sure you've seen me encouraging everyone to read the entire thing. It's a very good interview. I am very disturbed about this part, though.

[Classical_Liberal]

13. I look at things more holistically.

.

[sfecap]

16. Whatever works for you.

n/t

[dfong63]

26. just because you find a quote hard to defend,

... doesn't mean it was "cherry picking".

remember, we're all capable of reading from multiple sources and integrating and making a judgment on the totality of information. but in a thread, it's perfectly reasonable to focus on one issue at a time. indeed, if we tried to discuss all issues at once, there'd be useless chaos. sfecap's quote didn't take anything out of context, in the sense that the meaning of the quoted text would not be altered by the rest of the article.

[madaboutharry]

5. This is life

My next door neighbor is Mr. Republican. He flies this REALLY BIG American flag out in front of his house 365 days a year. We can't have rational discussions about politics, but I truly like him. He is a wonderful guy - always willing to help out a neighbor, very charming, and the person you would want living next door. I swear he washes his garage floor. He has the most disgusting politcal viewpoints you ever heard. But if you asked me about him, I would tell you that I liked him and that he was a decent guy.

[sfecap]

8. Your neighbor isn't Paul Wolfowitz.

Is he? :-)

The people who Clark considers colleagues whom he likes alot, and would work with again are war criminals and thugs of the wost kind.

This answer is a bit of a shock to me. I really am taken aback.

I cannot support a man who considers these scumbags friends.

[Classical_Liberal]

12. I doubt you would like any of the candidates then

including Kucinich. You're view is not common and relies on cherry picking.

[sfecap]

20. Uh, first of all...

I'm not cherry picking. I posted the link, and encouraged that all read the ENTIRE article. When I read the entire article I was stunned to read that answer. Really, I was.

I didn't make up the quote. It's right there. That's what the man said.

If you support any of the people that Clark claimed to "like alot", then I suggest you might want to reconsider your DU handle.

My view of Rumyy, Cheney, Wolfowitx, et all are very common here at DU. They are murdering scum and war criminals. Please don't defend them, OK?

[Classical_Liberal]

39. Excuse me?

Because I point out that none of the candidates would call them war criminals including the avoid peace candidate Kucinich I am a supporter? Well, that is where deductive reasoning gets you.

[Julien Sorel]

30. Good. Now that that's decided,

you can stop pretending that you were ever really interested in information, and go to one of your Kool-aid hoe-downs with your fellow Deanies. And we'll all be the happier for it! :-)

[sfecap]

32. LOL.

Get back on your knees.

How does the General look from down there?

[Julien Sorel]

41. A lot better than Dean, I imagine. But Dean's so short you

probably have to do him laying down ;-)

[dfong63]

28. your neighbor isn't responsible for the deaths of thousands

make no mistake, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, and Feith and the like are not harmless irrational cranks and wonderful guys like your nextdoor neighbor; they're unbelievably evil, dangerous people. and if Clark says he'd like to work with those scumbags, then i sure don't want Clark in the white house making appointments.

[juajen]

48. Remember, I think this was when he was a White House Fellow

I'm very sure that diplomacy would be the number one attribute needed when meeting and serving with these guys. All of our dems, of necessity, need good working relationships with the republicans they work with on a daily basis. This certainly does not mean that he would choose them for a cabinet position. BTW, what does a White House Fellow do?

[IranianDemocrat]

7. Some times you don't get to pick who you work with.

And you might necessarily agree with everything you do.

[sfecap]

10. Rationalize it however you wish....

I'm stunned that an "anti war", progressive/liberal/Democrat candidate would consider any of these thugs friends/colleagues and be willing to work with them again...

I liked Clark, now I'm not a certain. I'm finding things that concern me.

[Classical_Liberal]

15. You have a low tolerance then

because I doubt any of the candidates will call them war criminals or not acknowledge them as colleques if they worked in the same pentagon.

[sfecap]

17. Look, you can spin this as you like...

I would expect a man who knows the "political" ropes and purports to be progressive to offer something of a mild polite quote and move on. His answer kinda speaks for itself.

He'd work with them again?

Let me see...we've been lacerating these people on DU for over a year, and Clark evidently considers them competent colleagues who he'd work with again? Wolfowitz? Rumsfeld? Pearle? Feith?

Huh?

[Classical_Liberal]

18. He also says if Clinton had espoused such views

he'd be hooted off the stage.

[sfecap]

21. That was nice. But it has nothing to do with the fact

that he says he'd work with that group again.

Will we see some of those names in a Clark administration?

[carpetbagger]

23. They worked together to stop f*cking genocide.

And if they were working to stop another instance of genocide, I'd hope any of the guys running for president would work with them.

[carpetbagger]

22. Perle and Feith did actually go to bat for the Bosnian Muslims.

That's where Clark worked with them, when they were advising Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Clark was on the American team negotiating the Dayton accords. Perle and Feith were representing a people who were trying to avoid genocide. It was laudable then, and it's laudable now. The fact that they've gone utterly off their rocker, which Clark warned was a possible outcome, doesn't mean that at one time they weren't doing the right thing, if only once, and if only the one time Clark worked directly with them.

Stopping genocide is progressive, no matter how you choose to spin it in order to feul your attacks.

[sfecap]

24. Please. Don't try to fucking defend Richard Pearle.

These people are neocon thugs.

Give me a fucking break!

[carpetbagger]

38. Are you saying I'm lying?

Yeah, the guy's a thug. But when Clark dealt with him, he was a thug who mindlessly stumbled upon the right side of a moral battle. So when Clark says he's had positive dealings with the guy, it's true. I happen to believe it's also true when Clark says these guys are dragging America into a dangerous and counterproductive place in the world.

[sfecap]

40. Nope.

So, you are comfortable with the comment by Clark that he not only considers Cheney, Rumsfeld, Pearle, Wolfowitz, and Feith colleagues, (whom he likes alot...), but he'd also work with them again? The founders of PNAC?

If ANY other Democratic candidate said this whould that be acceptable?

[carpetbagger]

46. If it would stop genocide, I'd work with Ann Coulter.

And if Coulter and I managed to stop the slaughter of what's left of a nation and its people, I'd be happy to say she was a colleague with whom I'd worked well with and would do so in the future.

It's called being a diplomat and a peacemaker. It has nothing to do with whether I would appoint them to my administration.

[Tinoire]

55. An Undeclared and Illegal war of aggression and NO GENOCIDE

Another war on the pretext of "peacekeeping" or "humanitarian intervention" without the sanction of the U. N. Security Council.

Faked photos of fake concentration camps, mine shafts that were supposed to have hundreds of bodies in them and had absolutely none. Just another immoral war that demonized an entire peopple to justify destabilizing an entire region to suit the ultimate goal of corporate globalization.

Step 1 of the PNAC Plan was Yugoslavia.

Tony Blair and the men from JINSA never met a war they didn't like.

-----------------------
How the battle lies were drawn

The WMDs haven’t turned up. In 1999 there was no genocide in Kosovo. But, says Neil Clark, Tony Blair has never allowed the facts to get in the way of a good war

<snip> in Kosovo our humanitarian Prime Minister dragged this country into an illegal, US-sponsored war on grounds which later proved to be fraudulent. In 2003 Tony’s Big Whopper was that Saddam’s WMDs ‘could be activated within 45 minutes’. In 1999 it was that Slobodan Milosevic’s Yugoslavia was ‘set on a Hitler-style genocide equivalent to the extermination of the Jews during World War Two’.

<snip>

At the Trepca mine, where Nato told us that up to 700 bodies had been dumped in acid and whose name the Daily Mirror predicted would ‘live alongside those of Belsen, Auschwitz and Treblinka’, UN investigators found absolutely nothing, a pattern repeated at one Nato mass-grave site after another. To date, the total body count of civilians killed in Kosovo in the period 1997–99 is still fewer than 3,000, a figure that includes not only those killed in open fighting and during Nato air strikes, but also an unidentified number of Serbs. Clearly it was an exaggeration — of Munchausenian proportions — for the Prime Minister to describe what happened in Kosovo as ‘racial genocide’.

<snip>

In both Kosovo and Iraq, the government’s war strategy seems to have been threefold: 1. In order to whip up public support for war, tell lies so outrageous that most people will believe that no one would have dared to make them up. 2. When the conflict is over, dismiss questions about the continued lack of evidence as ‘irrelevant’ and stress alternative ‘benefits’ from the military action, e.g., ‘liberation’ of the people. 3. Much later on, when the truth is finally revealed, rely on the fact that most people have lost interest and are now concentrating on the threat posed by the next new Hitler. An admission of the government’s culpability for the Kosovan war only slipped out in July 2000, when Lord Gilbert, the ex-defence minister, told the House of Commons that the Rambouillet terms offered to the Yugoslav delegation had been ‘absolutely intolerable’ and expressly designed to provoke war. Gilbert’s bombshell warranted scarcely a line in the mainstream British media, which had been so keen to label the Yugoslavs the guilty party a year before.

<snip>

Last week, to the party’s eternal shame, only 11 Labour MPs voted for an independent judicial investigation into the way the British Prime Minister led us into war against Iraq. But, important as such an inquiry would be, it will not be enough. What is also needed is a similar, concurrent investigation into how the Blair government also deceived the nation over Kosovo. New Labour, of course, would rather we all forgot about non-existent mass graves, mythical rape camps and phantom WMDs. The interests of democracy and accountable government — to say nothing of those killed in two shameful conflicts — mean that we must never do so.

From the UK Spectator June 2003
http://www.antiwar.com/spectator/spec15.html

--------------

----------------------------------------------------------------

ACTION ALERT:

Why Were Government Propaganda Experts Working On News At CNN?
March 27, 2000

Reports in the Dutch newspaper Trouw (2/21/00, 2/25/00) and France's Intelligence Newsletter (2/17/00) have revealed that several officers from the US Army's 4th Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Group at Ft. Bragg worked in the news division at CNN's Atlanta headquarters last year, starting in the final days of the Kosovo War.

In the U.S. media, so far only Alexander Cockburn, columnist for The Nation and co-editor of the newsletter CounterPunch, has picked up on the story. Cockburn's column on the subject is available at http://www.counterpunch.org .

The story is disturbing. In the 1980s, officers from the 4th Army PSYOPS group staffed the National Security Council's Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD), a shadowy government propaganda agency that planted stories in the U.S. media supporting the Reagan Administration's Central America policies.

A senior US official described OPD as a "vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in enemy territory." (Miami Herald, 7/19/87) An investigation by the congressional General Accounting Office found that OPD had engaged in "prohibited, covert propaganda activities," and the office was soon shut down as a result of the Iran-Contra investigations. But the 4th PSYOPS group still operates.

CNN has always maintained a close relationship with the Pentagon. Getting access to top military officials is a necessity for a network that stakes its reputation on being first on the ground during wars and other military operations.

What makes the CNN story especially troubling is the fact that the network allowed the Army's covert propagandists to work in its headquarters, where they learned the ins and outs of CNN's operations. Even if the PSYOPS officers working in the newsroom did not influence news reporting, did the network allow the military to conduct an intelligence-gathering mission against CNN itself?

For instance, one PSYOPS officer worked in CNN's satellite division. According to Intelligence Newsletter, rear admiral Thomas Steffens, a psychological warfare expert in the Special Operations Command, recently told a PSYOPS conference that the military needed to find ways to "gain control" over commercial news satellites to help bring down an "informational cone of silence" over regions where special operations were taking place.

An unofficial strategy paper published by the U.S. Naval War College in 1996 and written by an Army officer ("Military Operations in the CNN World: Using the Media as a Force Multiplier") urged military commanders to find ways to "leverage the vast resources of the fourth estate" for the purposes of "communicating the objective and endstate, boosting friendly morale, executing more effective psychological operations, playing a major role in deception of the enemy, and enhancing intelligence collection."

ACTION: Please write to CNN and ask why the network allowed government propaganda specialists to work in their news division.

http://www.fair.org/activism/cnn-psyops.html

[alfredo]

27. Now if they attack Clark they will look even more like creeps

"And Brutus is an honorable man."

[Eloriel]

34. But you don't have to praise them

Which is what Clark did. You can get away without bashing them, but praising is more than neutral.

Eloriel

[eleny]

14. I'll bet it creeps out...

the administration even more than you. Can you imagine how they feel now that he's running against their crowd? He knows them from the inside and he probably knows some good dirt and how they think from the inside.

If I were them, I'd have the chills and night sweats given that things are going downhill all of a sudden. And along comes the general from out of the mists - their worst nightmare.

[Pastiche423]

19. Why should they

have the chills and night sweats? He likes them and would like to work w/them again!

[juajen]

50. Come on, guys

This man is brilliant. I believe you can trust that he knows the effects of what he says. Gotta be pretty disarming for the opposition; and Clark has made damn sure in everything he says that he opposes them. If Dean is not threatened by Clark, why should his supporters be? They are both good men. By your own words, if Dean has leaned on Clark for advice and trusts him, then I guess Dean would be guilty of supporting all of these people that Clark says he worked well with. Ya'll are nitpickin'.

[sfecap]

51. I'm sorry, but with this Democrat...

...friendships with people that I abhore, who are merchants of death in all parts of the world, is not nitpicking.

I am very concerned with a former General who voices the opnions of these thugs that Clark did.

I fully understand if others want to ignore stuff like this, but I can't.

[Pastiche423]

52. How can anyone trust

he knows the effects of what he says, when he's saying he likes and would like to work again w/the most evil, vile scum in our country? That's opposing them?

Sorry, I don't buy it.

Btw, my opinion of clark has nothing to do w/the candidates I support. I do not trust or like HIM.

[dfong63]

25. so does this indicate the kind of appointments we could expect

.. . in a Clark administration??????? YECCCH

[IranianDemocrat]

29. He had to work with Pearle in the Balkans crisis.

So does this indicate the kind of slander and generalizations we could expect from you? definitely.

[sfecap]

35. Look, please go look up the definition of slander.

Clark replied as printed in the interview.

I didn't make it up. In fact, I wasn't even looking for it. I was looking for his views on Iraq (pre attack). In the article he pretty much said he opposed the attack. Good.

That answer pretty much surprised me. I'm sorry if you don't like it. Take it up with him. He sure should clarify it, IMO.

I think having "colleagues" whom he likes alot who created PNAC is relevant information when considering his candidacy.

Now, I'm sure over at FR it wouldn't bother anyone. In fact they'd probably defend the General. After all, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Pearle, Wlofowitz, Feith are their heroes. They like them alot.

[otohara]

31. Former CIA guy Ray McGovern Referred To Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, etc...

as "crazies" and said that many people during Raygun/Bush then Bush I years refrred to these guys "crazies" - and were shocked to see them all come back. This interview is on Wed 9/17 of Democracy Now, titled "The Crazies Are Back"

I trust McGovern when he calls them crazies, they are fucking crazy. It is disturbing to that Mr. Clark "likes these people a lot"

[Classical_Liberal]

37. Were they crazy when they tried to stop genocide in Bosnia

?

[WaterDog]

36. Well, on Hardball today

Clark was very definitive in how he views the War in Iraq. He was the most articulate I've ever heard about what's really going on there. We need his voice in this campaign. And I'm for Dean.

[sfecap]

43. Yes he was.

The original intent of my reading this article was to research his comments before the attack.

I just happened across this quote from him.

[Skwmom]

42. It's called "office politics"

Clark had an idea of what should occur in post war Iraq and I'm sure pissing off the people in charge would not have furthered his ideas.

[sfecap]

44. Um...he was gone from the "office" by then.

His "ideas" didn't count.

This is kind of funny...watching Clark supporters defend Clark's "colleagues"...the founders of PNAC, the architects of death in Iraq.

I guess I've seen everything here now. I have truly gone thru the looking glass...

[Pastiche423]

47. I've gone through it w/you

DU has changed tremendously in just the past year.

[juajen]

45. This should not freak you out

It just says a lot about his diplomacy and real ability to get along with people of all persuasions. Heard part of an interview with Jimmy Carter in PBS tonight and he even had good things to say about Sharon. Go figure. These people, especially the good ones, have to keep working relationships with people with whom they disagree. Clinton has this ability, also. It has stood him in good stead.

[Tinoire]

49. Some info for your research

Read, research and form your own conclusions. Sorry this is so disjointed but I'm going to bed now... :)

A good starting point is the
Markle Foundation The Task Force on National Security in the Information Age of which Clark is still a member according to their home page.

Markle's Homeland Security Page will take you to very interesting reports re HOMELAND SECURITY, NATIONAL ID CARDS/DOCUMENT FRAUD/WIRETAPS/PRIVACY and ANALYSES OF NEW LEGISLATION, THE PATRIOT ACT, NEW FBI GUIDELINES, etc...

---
Zoe Baird, Markle's President is a current member of the Technology and Privacy Advisory Committee, which advises Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld regarding the Department of Defense's use of information technology to fight terrorism. and who has been an advisor to the Department of Defense defense transformation effort in the Bush Administration.

Another example of Markle's work: Task force: Homeland Security Dept., not FBI, should shape info priorities

task force on national security Oct. 7 called for the new Department of Homeland Security to take the lead in shaping domestic information and intelligence priorities to inform policy-makers, rather than the FBI.

The recommendation was made in a report issued by the Markle Foundation's Task Force on National Security in the Information Age. The report, "Protecting America's Freedom in the Information Age," calls for a networked information technology system that shares information among local, state, regional and federal agencies.

People outside Washington, such as police officers, airport officials, FBI agents and emergency room doctors, do most information gathering; therefore, the government needs to use information technology to harness the power of this widely distributed information to protect Americans against terrorist threats, said Zoe Baird, president of the Markle Foundation and co-chairperson of the task force. Baird served the Carter administration as associate counsel to the president.

"Much of the information we need is local. Rather than creating a Washington-centric model, we need to create a networked, decentralized system," Baird said at a press conference unveiling the report at the National Press Club in Washington. Task force members were set to brief the president's homeland security director, Tom Ridge, later in the day.

-----

The Brookings Institute and Markle work very closely together. If you need more info about that let me know and I'll find my refs but it's their on their homepages...

You can find out more about the Brookings Institue and its associations on the PNAC page here: http://www.thefourreasons.org/pnac.htm

A look at their Board of Trustees reveals a mass of CEOs and other business figures, sprinkled with reps from academia, and also includesformer and current heads of the World Bank.
------------

New Task Force Aims to Protect Nation with Better Information and Technology

The Markle Foundation in alliance with CSIS andThe Brookings Institution launches information and technology working group to improve national security

New York, NY and Washington, DC, March 6, 2002 – An independent, multi-sector task force to determine how information and technology can enhance national security was announced today by the Markle Foundation in alliance with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Brookings Institution.

The task force will make recommendations regarding:
· Technologies that enable the more effective collection and sharing of information in response to new security threats
· Aligning governmental structures and rules with the more information-intensive approach needed to counteract new security threats
· Balancing the expansion of information’s role in national security with safeguards for civil liberties – particularly in the privacy realm
· Strategies for deploying information more effectively for law enforcement, intelligence and homeland defense
· The role of the private sector in designing and implementing an information-based national security response, and the level of collaboration between private and public sectors

http://www.markle.org/news/_news_pressrelease_030602.stm

-----------

I'll also note before going to work, that the Brookings Institution is not that Left and this has been discussed at DU in the past.

There is little question about the source of PNAC's influence. When it was founded in 1997 by two prominent neoconservatives, William Kristol and Robert Kagan, its charter, which called for a U.S. strategy of global pre-eminence based on military power, was signed by men who would become the most influential hawks in the Bush administration, including Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, and Cheney's influential national security adviser, I. Lewis Libby.

"Thus, among the signers who have never before been associated with PNAC, are Robert Asmus, a former deputy secretary of state for Europe; Ivo Daalder, a prominent member of Clinton's National Security Council staff; Robert Gelbard, a former U.S. ambassador to Chile and Indonesia; Martin Indyk, Clinton's ambassador to Israel; Dennis Ross, his chief adviser on Palestinian-Israeli negotiations; Walter Slocombe, Clinton's top policy official at the Pentagon; and, most important, James Steinberg, Clinton's deputy national security adviser who now heads foreign policy studies at the influential Brookings Institution."
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0303pnacletter_body.html


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=270701

[RevolutionStartsNow]

53. Excellent, thanks Tinoire

But jeez, I am going to have to quit my job entirely to keep up with this stuff. It's fascinating.

[rman]

54. Perle representing the Muslims. oh the irony.

being the zionist that he is.