Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 13:51:37 -0700 (PDT)
From: Chris
Subject: Re: Digest Number 2335

The man picutred in that AP story looks very much similar to one of the
2000 miami dade rioters. Is his son one of the conghressional staffers
paid to riot for Bush's 2000 scandal in Florida?
http://www.dailykos.com/

Meanwhile I wrote a reply to critics of Clark's latest statement
regarding the Iraq war:

what don't you get about making Bush take blame?

...either he takes control of this and stops mouthing vague platitudes
about freedom or he does not...

Bush and republicans as the power party must define the mission.

why do they refuse? Because the war has always polled poorly on
internals. A majority questioned iraq before it got rolling, the Jessica story
changed polls , along with disproportionately large samples of
republicans when registered Dems outnumber them by a third plus...

Republicans want to say nothing about the necessary manpower increase
needed...

instead they ignore the gorilla in room.

Bush is sitting on the fencepole with his action

his actions don't belie his words.

The implications of either move are political albatross for the neocon
neck.

Unpopular war gets no support for sending more. Failure to do otherwise
is a vain effort. The Republicans have nobody to blame but selves for
not making the certainties of greater numbers work with the integrated
effort of neighboring lands, EU and the UN.

They want to cut and run, it's why they've been saying otherwise.
Republican incumbents are putting the pressure on AWOL. Keep quiet about the
war until after '06.
It's why he's on vacation so much- the less in the beltway he is seen
the less collateral interviews take place in the void of his statements.

Clark is calling his bluff.

Remember Rove is trying to whoop up the attacks on Cindy as people
being 'against the troops' and by reinforcing this call for detailed
justification and orders they hold Bush accountable.

If he can't answer to the truth in either aspect what good is he?

Clark is stopping him from blaming others. The goalposts have been
moved. The onus of justification lies in a cohesive stratagy.

Bush does not have one, never has.

This will open the sutures of glossed over, ignored contractor work.
Because a valid plan includes an invitiation to the international
community.

Cheney will not let that happen. The Truth abides and every single
aspect of the Bush plan is corrupt to the core. For Bush to take forward
Clark's claim he has to open the books and be transparent.

Clark has not justified an escalation. Clark has simply opened a window
of transparency. Bush will never cede this.

He's just placed into motion a set of mitigating standards to justify
further action. Wes Clark raised the bar for rebuilding, appropriations,
troop support, and international assistance.

You will see this in the upcoming weeks. He's a surgeon of procedure.
The scalpel has been put in place. Wes Clark is in front of Red America
, shifting the goalposts on Bush, holding the spotlight to his planned
'exit and blame' approach.

Conyers is America's Conscience.

Your letter to the WSJ and your comments on Meet the Press are both right on the money. I think your stance hews very closely to the line that I believe all of us Democrats can take:
1) We would not have invaded Iraq in the way they have done.
2) We would not have occupied Iraq in the way they have done.
3) When we take back the reins of power in 2009, we will move promptly to withdraw any remaining occupation troops; and
4) In the meantime, we support the efforts of our troops.

In this way, we can impose an effective deadline on the occupation, of the only kind the Bushites can respect: Election Day, November, 2008. If they can withdraw safely before then, Iraq will not be such a big issue in 2008, and that is the best the Republicans can hope for.

What more can we say or do? They don't listen, anyway...

General Clark,
I supported you in '04 and have continued to do so since then, but I am disappointed in your "plan", including your WaPo op ed today. Turn up the diplomacy, turn down the rhetoric -- Bush is already doing that since the election. Send more troops -- Bush is doing that too short term, and long term there are no more to send. They're coming out because we're running out.

The logic of all the Democrat front-runners is "we made a mistake going in, and Bush as messed it up, but let's stay there to make it better and honor the fallen." At least you actually opposed it going in. But what does "better" look like? A Shiite theocracy? (elected freely). A less violent version of the status quo with a permanent US occupation? Neither of these is worth the cost, but Dems are afraid to say so. We'd rather try the no-plan plan strategy and let Bush stew in it for another couple years. We've tried that before. Kerry "almost" beat Bush in 04, and Humphrey "almost" beat Nixon in 68. But they both lost, and looking back, who today thinks their no-plan plan strategy was smart?

i agree with the general's highly-cogent plan to create a robust combination of forces instead of soldiering-only - what else will allow our boys to come home ASAP without leaving a bloodbath in our vacuum? watta mess...there is the now-reasonable question of whether it can even be cleaned up at this point without years more of iraq wars. maybe if we could just first try some effective strategies in iraq, we'd be able to assess the success potential remaining in the oddly-enacted US mission there. does anyone here pull any weight with the current admin. in washington? if so, maybe you could ask them to diverify their strategies for us, try something new, anything?

Gen. Clark, what is your plan? What would have happened had FDR annonced in 1943 that we were pulling out of WWII in 1944? You are playing to the radical anarchist liberals who hate America. You can say that you love America but you are merely pandering to those extreme anti-war low lifes who hate all that is good about our conntry. When the Moslems are striking at our country with nuclear devides what are you going to do? What is your plan? How do you propose to defeat the Moslem civilization that wants all Christians and Jews extreminated?b Was
sayen zie, fuhrer?

Here I sit in one of the most red states in America and the
really sad part of it other than the fact that our country is being misled by the current administration, is the fact that for years now the Democratic party as a whole has always just written this state off and never put any real effort in here.

I know it all comes down to the number of electorial votes in many cases, but it actually goes far beyond that. We do have two senatorial seats just as the other states. That is two Senate seats that the Main Democratic party has not really put any effort into getting back into the democratic camp.

In regards to the Presidential race of 2008, I believe that with
more clarification of your overall position on some issues, you could possibly have more of a chance to win that election in our state than any other possible candidate on the Democratic side that I have seen mentioned to date.

However there are several issues that determine the outcome of the vote in places like MS and the deep red south besides just the war in Iraq. I personally think that the War is one of the biggest issues, but still realize that states like MS can not be won on the war issue alone.

I am looking forward to further understanding of where you are in terms of the other issues that sometimes can make or break a victory in the top election.

I do believe that if you are at all interested in a run in 2008
you do not need to wait much longer at all before making it widely
known. There is so much and so many issues that has to be put into perspective and it can not have justice done to them to wait until the last months of an election year to start building the base from wich you plan to cover all the issues.

Respectfully and with great respect from Mississippi.

Gen. Douglas Macauthur quoted"Old soilders never die they just fade away", Please Gen. Clark now is not the time to fade away, we need leadership now more than ever. This country is in trouble at its very foundation, and right now it needs more "statesman" such as yourself to pull it back up by its bootstraps.

This is pretty offtopic, but I couldn't find anywhere else to put this...

T-shirts! Well, not just T-shirts, but good T-shirts! I, for one, would love to be able to wear a Wesley Clark [08] T-shirt, but they just don't seem to exist. We should go about fixing this!

saw general clark in maine this month.

he gave an impassioned, absolutely inspirational speech that nearly brought tears to my eyes.

general clark won't lie to get us into war. If you have met him, read his books and heard him speak in person, you know.

if general clark wants the job, i want to know..is america ready for a sincere, intelligent, dedicated patriot, a man of vision and commitment and passion for the country and its people, a leader who will build upon what unites us, not what divides us.

a general clark comes along only once a generation.

god bless you general clark and thank you, whatever you decide.

always in your corner

bill

If I could put words in Wes Clark's mouth:

"In order for us to get the job done in Iraq, the President first needs to apologize to the country.

-He needs to apologize for not catching Osama Bin Laden when we had the chance.

- He needs to apologize for lying about weapons of mass destrruction.

-He needs to apologize for tossing out the Powell doctrine and going into Iraq undermanned.

- He needs to apologize for the torture. AND

- He needs to apologize for saying that our soldiers have died for a nobel cause and admit that they died for his ego.

When we clear the air about all the lies and deception, we can get to work in Iraq."

If he said something like that... Oh lordy, he would win the nomination in a landslide, and he would crush whoever ran against him in the election.

Gen. Clark, I am relieved to know that you are continuing to speak out about the "Iraq" war and questioning where the neo-conservatives are leading our Country.

The American people are beginning to realize we need a President who will level with us and has a clear vision on national security.

I supported you in the "primaries" because you were strong (not reckless) on National Security. I also believe you were correct when you said "family values means you value families"!

Pres. Clinton moved this Country forward with programs that helped the Middle Class. Al Gore would have moved the Country forward even more in technology. I also believe Al Gore would have never ignored Richard Clark's warnings about Bin Laden!

Hillary Clinton may make a great President some day. At the present time we need someone with some military experience with diplomatic skills. I hope you will run again in 2008!

General Clark:

I supported you financially and at the polls in your Presidential Bid and would be proud to do so again. The country needs your voice and I encourage you to continue to speek out. Your leadership is much appreciate.

Carroll Moore, Salem, Virginia

Thank you so much, General Clark, for speaking the truth and for standing up for what is right. I'm not what anyone would call a "good democrat", in fact the only time I have consistently voted AGAINST the republican party was in 2000 and 2004. Note that I did not vote specifically FOR any democrats per se, but against particular republicans. I have written this to ask you to please consider running for the office of President in 2008. You have given me hope, Sir, that in the future my vote will be a vote that stands FOR something. I have no children of my own, but I love my 15-year old nephew so much it brings tears to my eyes sometimes. I worry so much about the kind of world that we are making for him to grow up in. He is a such a fine and decent young man. I think that there is every possibility that my nephew will be draft-eligible when he graduates from High School in 2009. I'm the first to admit that life is not fair, but my nephew deserves to become a young man in a world that is worth saving. I'm asking you to please consider running for President in 2008. If we can't leave him a world at peace, at least we can leave him a nation with honor. Please run in 2008.

I think it's always easy to pin blame upon the guy at the top of the food chain, particularly in the instance provided by Iraq. Certainly, President Bush's national leadership has gotten more problematic as a result of the growing debacle there, but his vision and intent were certainly bold and audacious back in 2003. The problem lies a few notches below...within the uniformed services, at the level where Bush received much affirmation for the direction he wanted to take the country within the context of the Global War on Terror. For example, how many generals and colonels were mentioning back then that the US military simply lacked the capability to deal with an insurgency, if one arose? While I was not a CENTCOM planner at the time, I always believed that the assumption the Iraqis would fight us mano a mano as it did in 1991 was foolish. Why would it want to operate in a way where it would expose itself to our strengths? Insurgency was the only thing that made sense. Yet we deployed with a force that was something straight out of 1991, or 1944, and assumed that only myrrh, frankincense, and smiles would line the path to Baghdad.
Let's face it...anyone who served in any conventional combat arms unit in the past 20 years can tell you that at least from a US Army perspective, insurgency was never a training focal point. And certainly, because of the egregious lack of linguists and cultural specialists throughout the ranks and in strategic, operational and tactical-level planning staffs, we were not (and still are not) properly manned and equipped for the training and conduct of such operations. Yet we drudged on, and lived by such mantras as "the US military is the most magnificent armed force in history," "American soldiers have no equal," and "this is the best-equipped Army history has ever seen." Perhaps true, but square pegs have never been known to fit into round holes.
The fact is that we never had a viable "paragraph IV" "post-hostilities" plan for the operation. And nobody went tap dancing on the commander-in-chief's or secretary of defense's desks to say that "WE CAN'T FRICKIN DO THIS!" General Shinseki's testimony to Congress can be considered an effort of sorts, but why did he just vanish afterwards? And what about all of the other general officers who also pulled the vanishing act after being shoved aside? Didn't we have anyone then in the uniformed ranks who was savvy enough to employ either the media or even "open-door policies" to get the word out? That "WE CAN'T FRICKIN DO THIS!"? Even had the WMD been found in Iraq, no one was asking, "OK, now what?" It would have been easy for the military itself to put the issue at the forefront of the debate to go to war, but it didn't. Blame it on our culture of hierarchic loyalty and adherence to the Constitution. But it was not difficult to see that if an insurgency were to occur, we would be at a tremendous disadvantage as a result of our inability to truly appreciate culture within an operational and tactical context, lack of applicable training, and lack of appropriate equipment. And the end result would be a tar baby that would drain resources, diminish credibility, and possibly break the force as Vietnam did in the 1970s.
In every military school I've attended since the early 1990s, the student line has always been that the Army as an institution seems to only be readying itself for Gulf War II - in other words fighting the same fight as it did in 1991 - in only a more precise and surgical fashion. Where has the vision been within the ranks? George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld never saw what it was like to fight town-to-town, building-to-building, or room-to-room in their brief military careers. Therefore as senior strategic-level leaders, they must be able to rely on sound guidance provided by the leaders of the armed forces. In terms of Operation Iraqi Freedom, this guidance was nonexistent and as a result, American uniformed leadership not only gave the enemy the ability to have a vote on the outcome of operations, it also gave it the polling stations, town hall meetings, and political conventions along the way. And it also endangered other critical efforts in the Global War on Terror on all fronts.
We are now at the point where we are making things up as we go along, and fighting by trial and error. Let’s not kid ourselves...this is not the way to fight a preemptive war. Unfortunately, it is now the enemy who is kissing the babies - not us.

General, you are so right once again. It is tragic to hear Rumsfeld and the others say that we have enough troops in Iraq. It is obvious that we do not. They also need better equipment - more body armor and better armored vehicles. Boys and girls are still dying needlessly. Worse yet, we have no discernible military strategy in Iraq, let alone a diplomatic, political, or economic strategy. Why are others so silent on these issues, especially the military issues, which are so obvious? General, perhaps you could engage Senator McCain in this debate. He should understand that Bush and Rumsfeld are misusing and destroying the military. He is known for integrity and being outspoken. Perhaps he could join you in your efforts to make these vital issues heard. The press seems to publish whatever he says.
Keep up the great work General.
John Mattar
Belchertown, MA

First Bob Novak blows up over being told the WSJ is watching him and now you set the record state on this important issue.

Every day Iraq looks more and more like Vietnam. We keep getting in deeper and deeper. At least after Tet in '68 there was a plan for leaving the country - it was classified and not made public, but there was a plan.
Hope you will write more letters and articles like this one. Your supporters heard what you were saying two years ago. The opposition was not open to it so did not hear you.
Keep telling it like it is, and above all keep shouting down Chris Matthews and the other talking heads.
Thank you for your leadership.
PJH, Richmond, VA

Thank you General Clark. We cannot allow the media to continue to publish inaccurate, poorly investigated and biased opinions on vital issues that face our nation.

Thank you for the strong and clear message the puts them on their meddle.

General Clark,
This is an excellent letter - respectful, but absolutely true. Thank you for having the courage to speak out for so many of us who feel that we no longer have a voice in this government and in this country. I supported your plan in '04 and will support your plan in '08.

Thanks for your leadership.

Betsyinelvistown

Thank you for your words of wisdom General. WSJ deserved to hear you and I hope they will take heed of your advice and recognize it's worth.

How many more lives will be sacrificed at the progression of this administration's irresponsible strategies? They did not do their homework and now they do not even recognize their own failures.

Please continue to lead us, General Clark. Our hope is with you.

Barb in Michigan

Oh, how nice it would be if our prescious soldiers could take off for five weeks even if they had to spend it in Crawford, Texas. The only new plan I've heard from this administration is to change the War on Terror into the "struggle" with combatant insurgents. Twenty Ohians lost their lives this week in the "struggle". I cried for them and I wonder if the president even blinked?
Patti from MN

It's evident that you did. As detailed throughout your book, "Winning Modern Wars", I did pick up on some important comments that you wrote 2 years ago; ...

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"Using this transatlantic alliance as our base, we should then work to resolve our security challenges - the North Korean and Iranian nuclear prograsm, the continuing threat from Al Qaeda and terrorist groups...

snip>

In particular, the strategy in the war on terror needed reorientaion fo focus more on the terrorists themselves and less on the sponsoring states. This meant establishing a tougher network of national and international laws, as well as intelligence and enforcement actions, including appropriate assistance to friendly states around the world to upgrade their abilities to assist us in using law enforcemen, as the first means of attact against terorists.

We should use NATO to share the burdens of leadership and the UN to enforce our efforts with additional international authority. And, we should open up, not close down, communication with states like Syria and Iran, using all our means and elisting allies to effect change in policies and activities..."
- p192, Winning Modern Wars, 2003.

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However, given Bush's poor track record, along with the nomination of John Bolton as the UN (Am)Barrassador for the US, I'm not at all too confident that the latter of your plan will be enacted at all by this administration.

Dom Manalo
Maryland, USA

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Thanks for sticking up for us, General.

Thank you for getting this letter out there, your voice carries the thoughts of many of us with it.

Resolve is not a plan, it is an attitude. It would seem that the only plan this administration has is to snooker the American People. Yes, you did have a plan, one that I and many others understood.

When I read time and again that the opposition has no plan, I become convinced that I'm living in a country where people cannot read or hear. But I heard you General, and I'm glad to read your rebuttal.

Thank you again.

Donna Z--another member of the loyal opposition

It seems the plan is to draw down troops starting in 06. The rest of the plan is to cram the new consititution down the Iraqi's throats whether it's ready or not. It appears Iraq will get closer to Iran and there's no plan to stop that relationship. Women will be subjugated under Islamic law under the new constitution. Now we have GSAVE, which reports say Bush wasn't asked about and he's still calling it a war. Sounds more like Keystone Cops than any sort of plan. Still all politics, troop withdrawl in 06. Thanks for speaking up, General.
LJM

that's so great about your leadership General Clark, is that you lead by example. You don't just talk the talk, you walk the walk! - The perfect example of "a higher standard of leadership"!! Thank you!

-jen in OH

Thank you, General Clark, for contributing light to one of the darkest patches in our political discourse. While the WSJ does a good job presenting news and special reports, its editorial page is shockingly off-base.

Thanks again.

Ellen G

Thank you General Clark for saying what needs to be said and correcting the Editor's misguided notions by supplying him with some FACTS!