From the diaries -- Larry 

(footage of Bu$h speech from Veteran's Day)

Kiran Chetry (Fox anchor):  Alright, that was the president speaking at a Veteran's Day speech yesterday about the War on Terror, Iraq and of course critics of the war.  Our next guest has made no secret about the fact that he also has a lot of criticism for the war in Iraq and he says he has a plan for Iraq that would send the right signal to our troops.  Joining us now is former NATO Commander and Fox News Military Analyst retired General Wesley Clark.  Good to have you with us, thanks for being here, General.

WC:  Thanks, good to be here.

KC:  Ah, you heard the president's speech yesterday and there were many who said it's about time he came out and just answered to a lot of what's been going on lately, which has been not criticism for what's happening in Iraq but for what happened before we went to war.  Your thoughts?

WC:  Well, I think he, ah, there's a lot to answer for because the intelligence that was available was hyped.  I was one of many people who had seen previous intelligence that said the best judgment of the intelligence community was there might be weapons of mass destruction, some materials were unaccounted for.  But the talk about mushroom clouds that Secretary Cheney was certain they were going to get a nuclear device fairly soon and so forth; it was irresponsible, it was ungrounded in the facts and the Congress that voted on the resolution never had the chance to see all the dissenting opinions within the intelligence community so I think there's a lot to be looked at here.  I think strategically, though, we can see now, four years after 9/11, that going into Iraq in a way to fight the war on terror was a strategic blunder.  Al Qaeda <crosstalk> is in Iraq right now because there is not strong control over Iraq.

KC:  But let me ask you this.  There seems to be two different things going on.  One is a lot of the people who are the toughest critics right now of the president did vote to authorize the war, and we're talking about Senator Kennedy and we're talking about Senator Kerry, ah, Senator Clinton et cetera.  But my question is if things had gone better, let's say things went a little bit differently than they have been, there's no doubt we've had challenges in Iraq.  Would all of this 'I told you so's' be coming out right now?  It seems we're debating two different things - how Iraq's going now versus what we did before we got there.

WC:  Well I think it's inevitable in democracy that if things start to go bad, the voters and their representatives want to hold responsible or accountable the people who got it bad and got it wrong.  So that's why this is going on.  There's nothing wrong with that, it's the way democracies work.  But I do think we've got to keep our eye on the ball.  We've got three things going on in Iraq.  First we've got the effort to put an Iraqi government together and a stable country that doesn't fall apart, disintegrate into civil war or threaten its neighbors.  Secondly we've got a real problem with terrorism which is now rooted in Iraq and you see by what's happened in Jordan, it's expanding in the region.  And third, we've got other regional issues like Iran's quest for nuclear weapons.  So we've got to craft an Iraq policy that addresses all three of these concerns.  That's why I'm against those who call for a quick timelined pullout.  We have to redeploy forces eventually from Iraq.  I don't think we want to stay there but what we've got to do is train the Iraqi military, get the government in place, establish a rule of law, protect the borders, <crosstalk> there's a whole lot of things that could be done.

KC:  Which is happening.

WC:  But the problem with the administration's approach is that they've had tunnel vision on the military inside Iraq instead of looking at the whole region and using all the assets of the US government including diplomatica leverage.

KC:  Well, let me just ask you this.  Why aren't we getting more help from the outside community, from the world community, from the United Nations.  The United States is not alone in seeing the outcome and bearing the brunt of Islamic fundamentalism and terror.

WC:  Because of the way the United States has treated the United Nations and other agencies.  We've had a belief that our men and women in uniform could do this job all by themselves with the help of the British military.  And, you know, that makes good sense to some people in the Unites States who may not have been in the region and don't understand the dynamics, but the truth is this is a regional problem.  Iran and Syria are deeply involved in what's going on in Iraq.  They're part of the problem.  We have to use diplomacy to make them part of the solution.

KC:  I just want to ask you one quick question before we leave.  The Silberman/Robb Commission that came out, the former commission of the intelligence capabilities regarding weapons of mass destruction said in their report that they issued to Congress "we conclude there was no political pressure that caused anyone to skew or alter their analytical judgments.  Your response?

WC:  They never looked at whether the administration distorted the information that was available in its approach to the public and they specifically said they weren't authorized to do that.  That's what has to be looked at by this <crosstalk> Senate committee and they haven't done so.

KC:  Alright, we're going to talk more about that but we're out of time.  General Wesley Clark, thank you.