General Wesley Clark on Fox & Friends First
November 28, 2006
Transcript by RegNYC
Brian Kilmeade: Now, the guy who's saying we should've been talked to Syria and Iran a long time ago joins us now, and he's, he's a Fox News contributor, and he's got tremendous credentials.
Tiki Barber: Yes. Former NATO Allied Commander and Fox News analyst, General Wesley Clark joins us from Providence, Rhode Island. Welcome to the show this morning, Pres-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you.
Tiki Barber: Real quickly, President Bush is going to NATO, to the NATO summit. What is he planning on asking? What can we expect from him as he heads to this summit?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think he's going to ask for greater contributions from NATO members to help protect President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and that the NATO countries that are there remove restrictions on the deployments of their forces. What I hope he proposes and what I hope NATO will ask of the United States is greater leadership in creating overall strategy for success in Afghanistan, including an answer to the problem of opium production and a better economic life for people there.
Brian Kilmeade: Yeah. On top of it specifically, General, I think he's going up to Germany and saying, 'Look, you're over in the North. We need you in the South. You have 32- we have, you have 32,000, you have some troops in there. We need more troops in there.' Do the Germans have it and just not offering it, or do they have to build it?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, the Germans have, have been rebuilding their forces for 15 years, and they do have some more deployable forces. They are creating reaction forces. But their Army still relies on bringing people in through conscription. They still haven't moved to a fully deployable force. But I think it's not a, a problem of capability. It's a problem of will.
Brian Kilmeade: Right.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: It's a problem of the political process in Germany, the electorate, and what's popular at home.
Tiki Barber: General Clark, let's talk a little bit about Iraq. President Bush is also going to meet with Prime Minister Maliki to talk about some of the issues that are going on in Iraq. Some people are starting to classify it as a civil war with the sectarian violence that's going on over there. What kind of talks and what kind of direction do you think he's going to go with the Prime Minister there?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think that the tone of the President's remarks are he's going to ask the Prime Minister for his prescription on how to deal with the issue. This is more or less the tone that's been coming out of Washington for the last couple of months. This is now increasingly and Iraqi problem, at least to come up with a plan. Prime Minister Maliki's said publicly that this is a political problem inside Iraq. I agree with that. I've said that for a long time. This violence is not random. This violence is controlled. It may be that the victims are random, and there is a lot of criminality out there that's more or less tolerated. But the key political factions have their own militia, and they use violence to gain their supporters, to intimidate their opponents, to provide harassment
and pressure and-
Kiran Chetry: Right.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -and ultimately, they're after political goals not militarily, military goals.
Kiran Chetry: Well, it's interesting, General, you mention the militias, because intel sources are telling Fox News that actually there is a link between Hezbullah training-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Yeah.
Kiran Chetry: -Al Sadr's Mahdi Army. I mean-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Yes.
Kiran Chetry: -that is certainly a, a very detrimental outside influence. Who has control over that?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, this is one of the reasons why we ned to be talking to Iran. Iran has control of that. It may not be easy control for Iran, because maybe the political leadership in Iran will deny that they can influence Hizbullah, or they'll say, 'Prove to us that Hizbullah is doing this.' But the fact is we've known for some time that both Iran and Syria are meddling inside Iraq. They're doing that because they have from the beginning wanted the United States effort there to fail, and this is the way they're protecting their security.
Tiki Barber: Mm hm.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: So, that's why we've needed a dialog from the beginning.
Tiki Barber: Yeah.
Brian Kilmeade: Yeah, even though they don't deserve it, we might not have an option, according to some. General Wesley Clark, Thanks.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you.
