General Wesley Clark on Countdown with Keith Olbermann

September 4, 2007
transcript by Reg NYC and Melange

Keith Olbermann: From a psychological standpoint, perhaps that Draper book's most extraordinary revelation is Mr. Bush's apparent attempt to distance himself from the legacy of himself. Asked about his disastrous decision to dismantle the Iraqi Army, which put thousands of young men on the streets, almost all of them penniless, rather than recruiting them to rebuild their own country. Mr. Bush says his policy back in 2003 was to keep the army intact, that he, quote, "can't remember why the United States did not do that." Says he is sure he asked his administrator in Iraq at the time, Paul Bremer, what happened. Bremer now refuting that account, having released a letter he sent to Mr. Bush on May 22, 2003 referring to de-Ba'athification, saying, quote, "I will parallel this step with, step with an even more robust measure, dissolving Saddam's military and intelligence structures to emphasize that we mean business." Mr. Bush replied the next day, quoting again, "You have my full support." All this more than a week after the U.S. stopped paying Iraqi Army salaries. The San Francisco Chronicle having quoted an Iraqi Colonel at the time, who said, quote, "We thought the Americans were going to get rid of our oppressor, but now we see they just wanted to take our money. What will we eat? We will have no choice but to fight."

Let's turn now to someone who has done this kind of thing but successfully, retired General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, now an analyst for MSNBC. General, great thanks for your time, Sir.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Great to be with you, Keith.

Keith Olbermann: But well before Ambassador Bremer disbanded the army in May 2003, the end of those salaries provided something of a warning. Newspapers around the country recognized it, about the consequences. So, does this Bush argument of today make any sense at all, that neither he nor Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld wanted to disband Saddam's army, but somehow they just didn't bother to tell that to Ambassador Bremer?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Mm. No, it makes no sense. I think what it was is the administration failed to adequately plan the occupation, and we knew when we did this during the 1990's in Haiti, in Bosnia and Kosova. The key thing you had to plan was who was going to provide security for the population. This was not planned by the administration in any adequate way, and then it was caught up in the sort of euphoria and ideology of de-Ba'athification, which was a sort of democracy now, 'Let's inject them with a democracy shot, and everything'll be alright.' It was Rumsfeld saying, "Well, you know, they're going to be a little rambunctious" as they were looting the National Museum and, and so forth. I-it was a shocking failure to understand what has to be done in an occupation and the immediate aftermath, aftermath of a military campaign.

Keith Olbermann: The President was on his ranch, General, during that exchange with Ambassador Bremer, and now he doesn't, he claims not to remember it. How essential, how much of a turning point was that decision to disband the army in terms of America's military operations and specifically to, towards Iraq's future?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, it was clearly one of the two or three major turning points in the immediate aftermath of the war. It had a huge impact, because just as the Iraqi colonel said, it released 400,000 people onto the streets with no income and angry.

Keith Olbermann: The White House tells the Times that by the time of, of Ambassador Bremer's order it was fairly clear that the Iraqi Army could not be rebuilt. Bremer says he sent Rumsfeld a draft of, of the order on the 9th of May, only a month after Baghdad fell. Could the White House be right about that one point? Was it impossible by that point to rebuild Saddam Hussein's Army into Iraq's Army?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I wouldn't think so. I think what you do when you are in a situation like this you continue to pay, you hold formations, you keep the troops occupied. You go through one by one. You identify the bad apples, you pull them out to the side for prosecution or whatever. But the majority of the people are not touched, and they are paid. Of course, after the decision was made not to pay them, then if you said, 'Okay, all members of the Iraqi Army please report, you won't be paid for this,' the odds of having a good formation were low. But of you had been smart, you would of course continue to pay while you kept them in position and then drew off the bad apples and used the remainder to be the nucleus or help in some way restore civil society in the country.

Keith Olbermann: Well, they were, I guess, were still pretending at that point to be keeping costs down in terms of pay, but th-this last point about the finger pointing: Bremer, the President, previously Secretary Rice, Mr. Tenet at the, at, at CIA - do their attempts at legacy building matter? Does the finger pointing matter or does the President historically bear the weight, not merely of his own personal - there's a memo of choices - but those of his staff?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think there's no doubt about it this is President Bush's war. That's the reason he wants to make sure (chuckling) his successors carry it on.

Keith Olbermann: Mm.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: It- that's the only way he's going to get out of having the total legacy of having brought America into an operation that's been entirely unprecedented, that invaded a country and then failed to deal with the consequences.

Keith Olbermann: General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, now an MSNBC analyst, always our great pleasure, Sir. Thank you.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you.