General Wesley Clark on Countdown with Keith Olbermann

June 20, 2007
Transcript by Melange

Keith Olbermann: Time bringing about a big change in spin from the US military regarding the weekend attack on a suspected al Qaeda hideout in Afghanistan which killed 7 children. At first the US said it had no idea that children were inside but now American officials are telling our Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski that the US military Special Ops forces who launched the attack knew that there were children present inside that compound. Their justification for going ahead anyway: that the al Qaeda leader that they were targeting was considered such a high-value target that it was worth the risk. As of this morning, still no word from the US military on whether or not that target they sought was killed. And as we mentioned, a far cry from what the military had been saying about the attack on Monday because it had claimed it did not know the children were there. The mere fact that the networks like this one were even reporting the story thus prompted criticism from some quarters.

An honor now to welcome to MSNBC our new military analyst, retired 4-star Army General Wesley Clark. Also, of course, a former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO as well as a former Democratic presidential candidate. General, thank you for being with us.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Great to be with you, Keith. I’m really happy to be here.

Keith Olbermann: As we are. Should the media, sir, ever be restricted on what it can and cannot report about a military offensive after it has taken place?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well I think it’s hard to make a case for restricting the media in that circumstance unless there’s something that would put American troops, in the continuation of the operation, at risk.

If there was something about disclosing that it had begun that puts the follow-on force at risk, maybe you could make that case, but in general I don’t think it’s wise policy for the United States government to try to restrict what…what can and can’t be shown on television. The American people can see through that. We want to know how our troops are doing. They’re representing us, we love them, we want them to succeed, we want them to be safe and it’s the media that helps us interpret how well it’s going.

Keith Olbermann: It’s always been true that way.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: It has.

Keith Olbermann: But now…this subject about the children in Afghanistan. That would not…not so much what happened, but the military’s assessment and revelations about what happened and whether or not they knew about the kids there…um, during the Afghan and Iraq wars, there have been other examples in which the military’s version of events have…have evolved. Um, Pat Tillman’s death, uh, the cover-up of the fact that he’d been killed by friendly fire, the capture, the rescue of Jessica Lynch in the Iraqi hospital. Stories change, circumstances change days, weeks, sometimes months after the fact. Does that not even further underscore the need for persistent, consistent reporting? I mean, without it, would we ever have learned the true story about Corporal Tillman’s death or Private Lynch’s rescue?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think you’re right. I think it’s…I think it’s really hard to know what happens in battle and usually the first reports are wrong. And, in my personal experience the first reports have been wrong. We had a case when I was leading the operation that was striking the Serb forces in Kosovo where we actually bombed a convoy. The airmen swore that it was a Serb force that was driving these tractors and burning houses and we intensively looked at it over a period of weeks and finally, finally at the end a year later or so, we talked to the Albanians who’d been there and they weren’t Serbs. And it was an extremely difficult thing to get the truth out of…out of these circumstances. Just…it’s difficult.

Sometimes there may be some misleading. I think there was misleading in the case of Pat Tillman. I think the investigation bears that out. In this latest case, we don’t know if there was misleading or not. It may be just that first reports weren’t correct and by the time they got the special forces guys back in and debriefed them, they realized they had in fact taken the calculated risk of calling in the bombs even though they saw the presence of children in the compound.

Keith Olbermann: On the other issue that has been made and raised, the argument that’s being made and criticizing news organizations for covering, at all, insurgent attacks, terrorist bombings in Iraq, in Afghanistan, that covering them only helps the insurgents. What…what’s your assessment of that charge?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well I think it’s an absurd charge. I think the truth is that the word on military successes and defeats is important in a democracy and that word’s going to get out whether a TV station covers it or not.

And the American people have a right to know, they have a need to know and the idea that you could sort of decide not to show this because it might be discouraging or whatever, that’s the kind of…that’s the kind of censorship that undercuts faith not only in news organizations, but in governments. We’ve always believed in the truth. I think if you lay out the truth, if your policies are sound, if your motivations are correct, if your policies are honorable and legal, then the truth is the best policy. If it isn’t, if those aren’t your policies, maybe you’ve got something to hide.

Keith Olbermann: Amen. Let me ask you…this is more of a philosophical question, an assessment question than a breaking news question, but given that we had to do that, that there was an attack looking for an al Qaeda high-level target on the loose in Afghanistan, not to mention bin Laden and it’s 5 ½ years after the attacks of 9/11, and the start of a war in Afghanistan, do you think we are devoting our resources as we should when it comes to fighting what the administration calls the war on terror?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Absolutely not. It’s…it’s been mistaken almost from the beginning. We went into Afghanistan as we should. We did not have a plan for success in Afghanistan to get al Qaeda. We didn’t want to put the American troops in because the administration was already planning on going after Iraq even though there was no connection established between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. So, we short-changed the operation in Afghanistan repeatedly. It was an economy of force mission, now we’re really committed in Iraq, the Taliban is coming back because basically, in that part of the world, there are forces and people that don’t want to see the Americans there. When you go in there, you have to have a plan for success, you have to get your success and you have to get out again. You cannot occupy these countries, it’s…we wouldn’t want to be occupied in America, either. And, so why we think we can stay there year after year and build friends, it’s backwards. You’ve got to have a plan for success at the outset, you’ve got to have enough resources to bring that success together and then you’ve got to turn it over to local people. That’s…we haven’t done that. In the meantime, al Qaeda’s using all our efforts as a recruiting incentive and so they’re training against us, they’re recruiting people against us…it’s, it’s trouble.

Keith Olbermann: Retired General Wesley Clark. We’re proud to have you with us on MSNBC and particularly on Countdown. We look forward to talking with you again soon, sir.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you, Keith.