General Wesley Clark on Countdown with Keith Olbermann

July 12, 2007
transcript by Melange

Keith Olbermann:  It’s an honor to be joined once again by Retired 4-star Army General Wesley Clark, also of course former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and a former Democratic presidential candidate as well.  General Clark, thanks again for being with us tonight. 

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK:  Good to be with you Keith.

Keith Olbermann:  The title alone of that new intelligence report, 'al Qaeda Better Positioned to Strike the West,' uh, obviously the phraseology reminds anyone who hears it of 2001's report 'bin Laden Determined to Strike US' followed by another report tonight by the AP about al Qaeda efforts to get operatives here, how serious that is is hard to say.  But how could a president play the fear card for so long and then simply dismiss what was reported today?  How could he have it both ways?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK:  Keith, he can’t.  I mean, the truth is al Qaeda has not only reconstituted its base area, this time along the border in Pakistan, next to Afghanistan, but it's also used our mission in Iraq as a huge recruiting magnet.  It ... every time we're seen on television, we generate anger among the Islamic populations and we feed the al Qaeda recruiting machine.  It's ... it's the inevitable accompaniment of the war strategy that President Bush chose.

Keith Olbermann:  Were he to listen to them, US intelligence officials would tell Mr. Bush that the group that identifies itself as al Qaeda in Iraq didn’t exist before the invasion, before the US invasion.  It did not pledge its loyalty to Osama bin Laden until October of 2004 and to this day it’s not controlled by bin Laden or bin Laden’s top aides.  Do you think the White House has reached a watershed at which this is no longer debatable? ; That the president's actions in Iraq have actually made this nation more vulnerable to terrorism and not less?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK:  Well I ... I do believe that the strategy in Iraq and the way it's been executed and the President's failure to face the facts and the administration's blindness on homeland security…all of this and the alienation of our allies ... ;yes, we're more at risk as a result of Iraq than we were prior to the invasion of Iraq. There's no doubt about it.  We ... we're not winning the battle against al Qaeda.  Keith, to win against al Qaeda, you have to cut off the flow of recruits and then take the organization apart step by step, but instead of cutting off the flow of recruits, we’re incentivizing recruits to flow to al Qaeda.

Keith Olbermann:  General, despite all of this, the President's prescription today was um…not a surprise one -- stay the course whenever possible, placing all the decision-making and the blame with the generals. He threw General Franks under the bus there. Uh, and when other generals ... like General Casey were against the escalation of troops, Mr. Bush simply got rid of them.  Senator John Edwards said tonight that this whole Iraq policy now borders on the delusional. Do you agree with that assessment?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK:  Well I do.  I think this is an administration that has really walled itself off inside the White House.  I think uh, you’ve got a president who’s fighting for her personal survival.  Um, I don’t know how he’s surviving without a flow of accurate information, but he is and he continues to say things and…and deny the obvious.  I’m…I’m sure there are some heated discussions among his aides, but they understand that he desires to be kept insulated and I…from what I’ve talked to with members of Congress and others who have seen him in recent weeks and recent months um, he has done everything he can to sort of wall himself off from what we believe is the truth.

Keith Olbermann:  Big picture.  Um, we’re engaged in a war that is pretty much been proven to have served as the best recruiting tool that Osama bin Laden could have ever hoped for, to the detriment of another war in which we had been close to catching him in an area where he is now supposedly reconstituting his organization basically. Uh, the Homeland Security Secretary of this nation is making decisions, announcing them based on his gut feelings, what exactly do you think the President is counting on to keep this nation safe? Is it dumb luck? Is it uh ... uh a ouija board somewhere?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK:  Well I think that um…I th ... ;I believe Secretary Chertoff when he says he has no specific information on plots. I do feel that in many parts of the country…I don' know everywhere, but in many parts of the country the FBI and the local police um, perhaps working with the Central Intelligence Agency have done a really good job of looking at potential threats and working with people in this country. So far there's not the degree of alienation among the Islamic population in this country that there is in let's say Britain or in Germany and that’s a very positive thing thus far in America. But I think basically this is an administration in which politics trumps policy in every field and especially in national security. And so I can't help but think that the Bush administration is looking to get through the summer. They never launch anything new before Labor Day. After Labor Day, trot out something else to try to extend this for another 15 months and get him out of office.

Keith Olbermann:  General Wesley Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, now MSNBC analyst. Let me echo as a firsthand ... with firsthand experience of dealing with the FBI and local police counterterrorism force, let me echo and second what you said about how great a job they're doing. Great thanks, General Clark.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK:  Thank you Keith.