When Did Clark Say These Things?

[Composed Thinker]

When did he say these things?

"President George Bush had the courage and the vision... and we will always be grateful to President George Bush for that tremendous leadership and statesmanship."


"I'm very glad we've got the great team in office, men like Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice... people I know very well - our president George W. Bush. We need them there."

[RichM]

1. May, 2001

[Composed Thinker]

3. And in what context?

[Pepperbelly]

2. there's already three threads on this shit...

why not start another?

:eyes:

Flame troll much?

[Composed Thinker]

4. Hey, I like Clark, and I want to find out everything I can about him

A lot of what he has said has been taken out of context, so I wonder if that was taken out of context, too.

[Pepperbelly]

8. this was some stuff Drudge was flailing earlier and ...

so many have lately taken to Drudge the way a dog returns to its own vomit. :puke:

Wesley Clark made a speech to the Pulaski County Lincoln Day dinner in 01. Most of the speech was anecdotal regarding his experience and the lessons learned from them that might be useful to people. He spent a few minutes at the beginning being kind to Bush, et al the way many after dinner spekers do. Some might call it being gracious although I have also learned of late that one should not be gracious to one's enemies. That is unforgiveable to some.

[QC]

10. Try doing a search--there are more than 100 posts dealing with this,

so something is sure to come up.

As I recall, it was early in 2001, I think in March.

[Sterling]

11. Clarkies consider anything that reflects poorly on Clark

To be flame bait and you are obvious an anti dem for wanting to know more about this issue.

[diplomats]

12. If we start relying on Drudge for "news"

we're in some serious trouble.

[Pepperbelly]

14. not answerable hence ...

it will not be answered. :D

[eileen_d]

16. Please... the preferred terms are

"Clarkers" and "Clarkettes" :eyes:
More information is provided in this thread, if you care to open your eyes.

[Composed Thinker]

18. I am not against the Democrats

[Stephanie]

22. If you're not against the Democrats, why do you always post

stealth anti-Dem threads? You take RNC talking points and pose them as a question in order to sneak them on to our board. Why?

[QC]

5. Four threads, but hey, duplicates don't seem to matter anymore.

[eileen_d]

6. Well, Drudge says he said them

So it must be true.

There is no transcript of "the talk" given May 11, 2001 at the Pulaski County GOP Lincoln Day Dinner in Little Rock, Arkansas. Drudge says he has a video. Here's an AP article on the event (PDF):
http://www.nwaonline.net/pdfarchive/2001/May/12/FZ%205-12-01%20A2.pdf

[eileen_d]

7. error - can't edit the previous post

I should say "no transcript that I know of." And also ensure that my opinion of Drudge is clear: he's an asshat.

[diplomats]

9. Hmmm...

no transcript. That's interesting. But I think Clark didn't deny the remarks when he was asked at the beginning of the debate. I didn't see it but that's what I read. (Personally, the remarks don't bother me.)

[eileen_d]

15. Yeah, I missed the earlier threads on this issue

Most of them were arguing back and forth anyway. The way I see it, Drudge says he has a video, and then he pulls a bunch of quotes completely out of context, with sensationalism as the obvious goal. I hesitate to draw any conclusions.

[Melinda]

13. The "Pulaski County Lincoln Day dinner" is a GOP event

fwiw. http://www.politicsus.com/campaign%20documents/091703APClark051201.htm

[sfecap]

17. Here's some other stuff he said...

"Gen. Wesley Clark, unplugged" by Jake Tapper, Salon 3/24/2003

(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://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2003/03/24/clark/

Notice any similarity?

[tinnypriv]

19. Wait, he likes the freaking NEO-CONS?!?

Is that for real????

What the living fuck?

[Pepperbelly]

20. yeah man ...

"Paul Wolfowitz I've known for many, many years."

That's a ringing endorsement if I've ever heard one.

Uh-oh ... he also said, "I like all the people who are there. I've worked with them before." I guess he should say he hates their guts and deny having worked with them when in fact, during his career, he did work with them?

Ooooops ... and then there is this one: "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."

Imagine! Worked with them in ironing out the shitstorm in Bosnia where these folk represented the interests of the Bosnia Muslims and Clark appreciated their work! Oh, my!

What shall we do!

:wow:

[Composed Thinker]

21. Well said, very well said

[tinnypriv]

23. So he's known Wolfo for many years....

Yet doesn't think he is a lunatic, and that is a good thing for you?

Er, okay. :crazy:

[eileen_d]

24. Perhaps Clark does think he's a lunatic

And didn't feel like going on record with his views. :shrug:

[tinnypriv]

29. He did go on record

"I like these people a lot"

Seems clear enough to me. :shrug:

If he didn't want to go on record, he'd say "I just worked with them" or "no comment".

Contrast this equivocating bullshit about the neocons with Dean saying he'd kick those guys out of Washington. Or Kucinich nailing their ass to the wall. Or Bryd ripping them a new one in hearings... etc etc.

These guys are murderous, ruthless, blood-soaked fucking bastards. Clark needs to distance himself from them and PNAC or he is joke.

[eileen_d]

37. IMO Clark *is* trying to distance himself

by running for President as a Democratic Party candidate and making statements critical of the Iraq war and the Bush administration foreign policy (see the excerpt from his new book, here: http://www.msnbc.com/news/969671.asp?0bl=-0 and various statements on foreign policy, here: http://www.issues2000.org/2004/Wesley_Clark_Foreign_Policy.htm)

But apparently it's easier to rely on a few scattered quotes from interviews and draw conclusions from them.

[tinnypriv]

42. So, since Clark knew Iraq was the target in Nov 2001...

I assume he declared the September 2002 product roll-out to be total propagandistic bullshit, right? :eyes:

[eileen_d]

44. oy, never mind...

You are judging the man by his failure to say exactly what you want to hear, rather than by what he is saying and doing. Sorry he doesn't meet your standards.

[Pepperbelly]

26. I looked but ...

could find no endorsement of Wolfie's sanity. Maybe you could point me to that one, eh?

[Pastiche423]

27. Of course it is!

For him clark can do no harm.

:eyes:

[Julien Sorel]

28. This isn't the U.K.

Politicians do not refer to other politicians as 'raving lunatics' here -- it isn't rough and tumble like it is over there. He has given speeches, written books, and made TV appearance after TV appearance, including his analysis of the Iraqi invasion, that demonstrate he is not a supporter of the neo-con approach. But in order to get real credibility, that's not enough. He has to call people 'raving lunatics.'

Just out of curiosity, have any of the other candidates called Wolfowitz & Co 'raving lunatics?' If not, why not? It's a requirement for the job of president, you know.

[Pepperbelly]

30. these guys don't care ...

they have their slogans. What more do they need?

[tinnypriv]

31. You mean criticism has more "nuance" in your part of the world?

Excuse me, but fuck that.

Even Peter Hain, a Blair Butt Boy Extraordinaire who supported the war is blowing the whistle on PNAC. You want a guy to the right of him?

Anyway, a few points:

1) I didn't say "raving lunatic", I said "lunatic"
2) I said Clark "doesn't think Wolfo is a lunatic". That is plainly accurate, since if he thought that way, he wouldn't say "I like these guys".
3) I never said Clark had to say Wolfo was a lunatic in order to be considered for President. The fact Wolfo plainly is a lunatic means Clark should make no positive comments about the man whatsoever and at the very least, leave the reader to draw their own conclusions about his sanity.

Or, he could embrace a bunch of 'em in one sentence. Whatever does it for you I guess.

Here is a requirement for President: no PNAC guy within an inch of policy-making in a Democratic adminstration. Are you sure Clark would go for that?

I doubt it.

[Pepperbelly]

32. whatever ...

I expect he would lean heavily on the Holbrook and Albright crowd. BTW, what are you guys doing about Blair?

[tinnypriv]

34. Well, at the moment a trade union friend of mine

Is going to the Labour Party conference in order to stir up some anti-Blair activity ready for a leadership challenge in Nov. I'm helping him out with that.

Bear in mind that we have less of a democracy than you guys. No impeachment, no separation of executive and legislature.

It's a long hard slog but that murderous lying toad will be out of office soon enough. ;-)

As for Albright and those guys, fine - they could be a lot worse. They're too hawkish for me, granted, but there is a world of difference between being a hawk like them and being a paid-up Nazi like the PNAC'ers.

If PNAC isn't unequivocally disgraced and kicked out of Washington, they'll be back behind the wheel time and time again. That should be a litmus test for any prospective Democratic adminstration.

At least one that could even pretend to be remotely progressive that is.

[Pepperbelly]

36. if he is "tight" with anyone ...

it is Holbrook who is also a little hawkish for me but then again, Clark has seen more than Holbrook. I truly think he would be far less likely to resort to military force than most Presidents.

[tinnypriv]

39. Well, here is a warning

I thought the same about Blair.

Then he ordered Brit troops into six wars. Count 'em up.

There is no evidence Clark is anything other than a standard establishment hawk. Zero, none, nada. That means you'll get a lot of wars in his tenure.

Hell, you'd probably get wars in a Dean adminstration. But on the evidence, you'd get less.

[Pepperbelly]

41. actually ... there is quite a bit ...

And I just don't think that he will. He is far too careful a man and far too moral. Unlike Patton, I don't think he loves war.

[Julien Sorel]

40. A few points of my own.

1) 'Lunatic,' 'raving Lunatic,' what's the difference?

2) I don't like any of the PNAC people myself -- let's just say their approach to foreign policy and mine are radically different. That being said, I don't think they are 'lunatics,' raving or otherwise. I think they are sadly misguided and desperately wrong. That doesn't make them lunatics.

3) You never had to say it. The simple fact is that Clark, of all the candidates, and that includes Kucinich, has by far the largest body of evidence that shows the PNAC vision is simply not what he's about. But that's not enough -- there are a few quotations from interviews that are being used to form these absurd conspiracy theories, and, at a minimum, feed the already flaming paranoia here.

Read Clark's works -- both his books and articles. See his TV appearances. See the major policy speech on foreign policy he made. Then tell me you worry about him being a PNACer.

[tinnypriv]

46. k

1) One would be an accurate quote of what I said, one wouldn't.

2) "Our children will sing songs about us" = lunatic

3) Either the quotations are accurate, or they're not. If they are, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference whatever platitudes DigitalClark encodes. My point remains that Clark should never make any positive statements about these guys, ever.

I've read his book (got it next to me actually). Not my cup of tea, but I got it since he entered the race. I've seen some of his TV interviews and was not impressed - his criticism of the war reaches roughly the level of the NY Times editorial on Vietnam in 1969. i.e. fight this thing better. Screw that.

I haven't seen his major foreign policy speech, but I suspect it will be as full of nonsensical feel good bullshit as Dean's usually are. I'm willing to be proven wrong though.

As for his articles, I liked the one where he praised the British troops (Sunday Times), thought the rest were ra-ra style crap (certainly after the fall of Baghdad), with some decent enough exceptions.

[Melinda]

25. How many GOP events have the other Dem Candidates appeared at?

Of course Clark wasn't a candidate then, but still - doesn't this make anyone else scratch their head?

:shrug:

[caledesi]

33. He explained why tonight..basically saying he was hookwinked.

Because all that he thought turned out not to be true. He didn't know they were all inept. Remember, how they kept saying how * had a great team around him. Well, now we see that this team isn't so great.

They have totally ruined this great country. <yeah, I own a piece of our flag too>

[sfecap]

35. Hoodwinked?!

I don't understand...

How could the FormerSUPREMEalliedcommanderwhoisalsoaRhodesScholarandwenttoWestPoint be hoodwinked?

How will he save us all if he can be hoodwinked?

Say it ain't so!

[eileen_d]

38. So what are you saying, exactly?

Oh wait a minute... you're not saying anything.

[RichM]

43. A troubling pattern, here. In May '01, Clark praises Bush, Cheney et al.

at a Republican dinner in Arkansas. (Why are we giving speeches at a Republican dinner in 2001?)

May 2001 was 5-6 months AFTER the stolen election. What excuse could someone have, by that time, for not already being well aware that the Bush team had been installed by fraud after suppressing the counting of votes in Florida?

May 2001 was ONE month after the first Bush tax cut -- the biggest of the cuts -- was passed by Congress. Yet Clark was still apparently quite comfortable with Bush. Why would that be so? There was already firm proof that Bush's policy was to massively shift taxes onto the middle class and poor, & away from the rich.

I'm not sure when exactly he made the remarks complimenting all the PNAC boys, saying he "liked" them. This was fairly recent, wasn't it?

At today's debate, in his first answer, he said, "We elected a president we thought was a compassionate conservative. Instead we got neither conservatism or compassion...."
- Who believed that Bush was really a "compassionate conservative?" (Who thought Bush was "elected?")

Altogether, I don't think Clark did badly today, but there is already a lot of evidence accumulating that he gets along entirely too well with fascists.

[eileen_d]

45. It's only troubling

if you hash over the same quotes over and over again, and judge Clark by what he failed to do or say rather than what he does in the present.

[Jolene]

47. How many supported LIEberman for VP

in 2000?

Sometimes we learn the hard way, don't we?

[ScreamingMeemie]

48. Dupe

Please post in this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=404912

Thank You : )
MrsGrumpy
DU Monitor