General Wesley Clark on The O'Reilly Factor
January 10, 2007
Transcript by Melange
Bill O'Reilly: Thanks for staying with us, I'm Bill O'Reilly. Personal Story segment tonight: in just a few minutes, President Bush will try to persuade the nation that more troops and a timetable for the Iraqi government might turn things around in that chaotic country. With us Fox News Analyst, General Wesley Clark. As you ah heard in my Talking Points Memo, you might have heard Dan Senor say, ah, the Bush administration was surprised that the uh, the country didn't turn around and didn't embrace democracy the way…I don't know about Afghan, but certainly the Afghan people were much more helpful to the United States than the Iraqis have been. Did that surprise you?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: No, I didn't expect the…the whole idea that you could roll into Baghdad and be treated like the liberation of Paris - it was a fantasy. That…<crosstalk>
Bill O'Reilly: But we rolled into Kabul and we were treated pretty well
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: That… Yes, because Kabul had been oppressed in a significant way by the Taliban. And because when the Americans… <crosstalk>
Bill O'Reilly: Hadn't the Shias been oppressed by Saddam?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: There was happiness to some extent but there were also…
Bill O'Reilly: Happiness among the Shia?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Absolutely, when we came in. But...
Bill O'Reilly: Oh, when we came in. Okay.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: But, but that's a far cry from the country just forming itself and moving on. You remember when we came in, we completely…all the bureaucracy was Sunni
Bill O'Reilly: We obliterated it all.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: That was the end of the bureaucracy, the end of the Sunni army, the end of a functioning society and uh, the Shia also…they had a grudge. They had a grudge against the Sunnis, they had a grudge against Saddam. In 1991 when President George H. Bush more or less suggested that the Iraqi people themselves would overthrow Saddam, the Shia rose up and there was a strong expectation that the United States might be there to support them and we weren't there to support them.
Bill O'Reilly: I know. Alright, but let's fast forward to now. Um, you're the Commander in Chief. You're in charge. You're the President. So, there are two decisions he has to make. Do you give it more chance and do you do it like this? I mean obviously he wants…it's better for the United States and the world if Iraq becomes a functioning democracy. I don't know whether that can happen. Probably won't. But do you give it one more chance with this scenario that he's going to lay out in a few moments? Do you do it?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think what you've got to do is change the strategy. I think the scenario that he's given us isn't a change in the strategy <crosstalk>
Bill O'Reilly: Give me a specific change that you would implement.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: What I would do is I would take a group of high-level diplomats that had the confidence of the president and I'd write out a list of principles - what I wanted to see in the future in the Middle East, and I'd send them off on a Gulf Stream and tell them ‘don't come back until you've talked to everybody, including Iran and Syria.' And I'd have with them…I'd have a kit bag of carrots and sticks and it might have economic aid, it might have economic sanctions. It might have troop deployments, <crosstalk>
Bill O'Reilly: Do you really think that would work?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think it gets it started. And I think if you don't do that…look, when we went into Iraq…and Bill - you know this, there were lots of people talking about Iraq was the first step, and then Syria, and Lebanon and then we got to do something about regime change in Iran. These countries decided that the only way they could defend themselves was to make it impossible for us to succeed in Iraq. <crosstalk>
Bill O'Reilly: Well, there's some truth to that.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: If we don't talk <crosstalk>
Bill O'Reilly: These are…these are bad guys.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Let me just finish. If we don't talk to these countries, <crosstalk>
Bill O'Reilly: Okay, I'm all for talking
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: If we don't deal with them <crosstalk>
Bill O'Reilly: Chat with them. Talk with them. But meantime…meantime, the security in Iraq is bad.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: But listen. <crosstalk>
Bill O'Reilly: While they're talking
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: You put 20,000 troops in, you don't think Iran can [click] turn the dial up and put a few more warheads in and do a little more training and get the <crosstalk>
Bill O'Reilly: Eh…I don't know whether they can or not.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well I can tell you they can. And I can tell you they're right there and they're right next door. They've got their hand on the rheostat and so simply putting troops in and hoping for the best especially with a 2-month or 4-month or 6-month timeline… <crosstalk>
Bill O'Reilly: You think it's a fiasco?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I don't think it's going to produce what we want and even if it did…let's think of this. Let's say the violence, like magic just disappears
Bill O'Reilly: or goes down
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Let's say it went down. Let's say it went down dramatically
Bill O'Reilly: Right.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Okay
Bill O'Reilly: That's what I hope happens.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Okay, what does that do to advance our aims in the Middle East? Do you think
Bill O'Reilly: Well it gives the democracy, the functioning democracy, a chance in Iraq to rebuild its country. So once you get the violence under control then you can start to get the services back, the jobs back…because it's all about Baghdad. <crosstalk>
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: It's not all about Baghdad. It's all about the region.
Bill O'Reilly: It's most about Baghdad.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Suppose they start to rebuild. That they rebuild a state that's very closely aligned with Iran. After all, Iran is their neighbor
Bill O'Reilly: We don't want that
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: We're going to be gone. They have to live with Iran. And, there are some cultural ties there and many of these people, like Hakim, lived in Iran. So now suppose they do that and let's suppose then that there's a Shia corridor that connects Iran and most of Iraq, southern Iraq, goes into Syria and then into Lebanon. Now, then what?
Bill O'Reilly: Then we have trouble.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Exactly.
Bill O'Reilly: Then we have trouble.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: So, how is it that the troop surge
Bill O'Reilly: But we're going to be there in Iraq. We're not leaving Iraq.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: How is it that the troop surge is connected to our strategic aims in the region?
Bill O'Reilly: All the troop surge does, if it succeeds, is it calms the violence down so improvements in the infrastructure can be made and training can accelerate. I agree with you that we have to confront Iran in a diplomatic way. Where I disagree with you is that you seem to be putting hope in that strategy. I don't put much hope in that strategy and I'll point to North Korea and I'll point to other fanatics, because these people are bent on destroying us, General. They want to kill us. So, yeah you can talk to them all day long, but to put optimism on the table…
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I'm not putting optimism on it Bill, but here's the thing about this. Iran and other nations, they may be our enemies. We lived…you lived, in this country when we had 6,000 Soviet warheads pointed at us. Kruschev came over here and said he'd bury us. They were our enemies.
Bill O'Reilly: Yeah, and he didn't because we would destroy them back
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: They didn't…
Bill O'Reilly: Mutual destruction
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: That's right. But we didn't have to attack and destroy them. We kept…and we talked to them. And we even had an embassy. And most of us didn't put much faith in it, but eventually when we took a whole broad…
Bill O'Reilly: I'm not disagreeing with you
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: …we took apart the Soviet Union. So, what's wrong with this as a scenario? You talk with Iran. You hold them at bay. One way or another, somehow western influence seeps into Iran and the people of Iran decide that there's a better way of living…
Bill O'Reilly: I'm not opposed to that
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: …than being under the Ayatollahs. Isn't that a better approach than saying that we're going to have to go to war with them definitely?
Bill O'Reilly: But if Iran continues to kill American soldiers and we don't do anything about it, as the scenario's been the last 3 years
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Where is Iran killing American soldiers?
Bill O'Reilly: Did you just miss…did you just miss
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Inside Iraq?
Bill O'Reilly: Did you just miss the guys that were captured there?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I did not.
Bill O'Reilly: Okay.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: That's precisely why I say we have to talk directly to Iran and why I'm less optimistic about the 20,000 troop surge because until we establish some dialogue, directly, then our troops are vulnerable.
Bill O'Reilly: Alright. I'm for the chat.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: It's not a chat.
Bill O'Reilly: I just don't have a lot of confidence in the chat.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: It is not a chat.
Bill O'Reilly: I'd send you over there.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I'd be happy to. I looked at Milosevic, I put my finger in his chest and I said, “Mr. President, if you don't comply with the UN resolution, we're going to bomb you.”
Bill O'Reilly: I'd send you and your buddy Bill Clinton right over there. I would do that.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: You'd send me over there, Bill and I'll tell you what…something will happen.
Bill O'Reilly: General.
