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General Wesley Clark on the Alan Colmes Radio (Fox News)
September 17, 2007
transcript by Reg NYC
Alan Colmes: Normally we go to the phones right at the top of the show, but tonight we are joined at the top...we'll go to the phones a little later on... with... by General Wesley Clark. He has a new book out called A Time to Lead. General Clark, thank you very much for being here tonight.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: It's great to be with you Alan.
Alan Colmes: We appreciate it very much. You just came out in support of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I did.
Alan Colmes: Not a big surprise. You're both from Arkansas. You had a good relationship in Arkansas. You had a good relationship, uh for years. I don't think it was a shock to anybody, right?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I don't know if it was a shock or not, but I thought it was the right thing to do. She's the, she's not just just the frontrunner, she's the frontrunner for a reason. She's got the most experience, she's bright, she does her homework, she's got great character, and she is strong and tough. And she can lead.
Alan Colmes: Some people would say that "Boy, ah, a ticket with Hillary Rodham Clinton and let's say, somebody who's had military experience... maybe someone who's also spent some time on the campaign trail, someone who could bring that kind of gravitas, wouldn't be such a bad ticket." Right? Do you know who I might be talking about?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I haven't, ah, actually considered that. Because, Alan, this was ... and this is the truth ok, I mean.... I thought a lot about running. But I couldn't get my preconditions met. And, um, I think that the American people should come together and pick the right person to be President and this is my chance to say that, and I took it.
Alan Colmes: What were your preconditions?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I don't want... I don't want to go into all that. I just want people to understand that I think that Hillary will do a great job as President and a great job as Commander in Chief and I think people should support her and let's get on with it.
Alan Colmes: Uh, you obviously have close ties to her... to the campaign... they're probably happy to have your support at this point. Uh,
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I hope so.
Alan Colmes: Uh, I mean you talk to them, talk to them on a regular basis.... Her heath care plan just came out today.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Yeah, I haven't had a chance to study it ...
Alan Colmes: Yeah
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK:... but from what I've seen of it, it makes good sense.
Alan Colmes: You, ah.... in your book... now. Was this book written with the possible idea of running for President, because people usually write books before running for President. Was this something you wrote and said, "You know if I run this book will be a ....
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: No
Alan Colmes: ".... launching pad."
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK:No, it was written with the ...
Alan Colmes: No?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: ...No, it wasn't written that way. It was written because a West Point classmate came to me and he said, "You know, you need to tell us what you did, Wes." He said, "You write these books. They're all policy books. They're hard to read, and nobody knows really what you did. How'd you get to be, I mean, you were just like one of us, and all the sudden you're up there running for President. What happened?" And so, he nagged at me for a couple of years to do this. Finally he said, "This is it. I mean, come on and get this thing written." And so, I brought him on as my ghostwriter, Tom Carhart, he's written a great book on the Battle of Gettysburg. He wrote a very good first book, I think, or second book on the First Armor Division in the Gulf War in 1991, one of the great, called Iron Soldiers, one of the great stories of the American Army in combat. And so, it was just time to write the book.
Alan Colmes: One of the things I found fascinating was your relationship with Alexander Haig. You were hired to be a speech writer-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Right.
Alan Colmes: -for Alexander Haig.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Right.
Alan Colmes: You and he are so different politically, and yet you have a very- In fact he once said of you, "Major Clark," which is what you were at the time, "is an officer of impeccable character with the rare blend of personal qualities and professional attributes which uniquely qualify him as a soldier-scholar." So, you have a very good relationship with Alexander Haig. And you, you know, I can't agree with him on-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I was a speech writer. I traveled with him-
Alan Colmes: Yeah.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -for a long time. Actually, I agree with him on, on quite a lot. I, and he would agree with me on quite a lot. It's just that he's a Republican.
Alan Colmes: Ha, ha, ha. (coughs)
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I sent the book. I said, "Would you have any-" You know, I, I respect him highly. He's a man who gave great service to the nation in a-
Alan Colmes: Yeah.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -terrible time. And I said would you like to, would you give me a blurb. And he, he wrote back, and he says, "I'm too old to commit political suicide."
Alan Colmes: One of the-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: But he wrote me a blurb.
Alan Colmes: Yeah. Yeah. But you don't agree with him on much, I'm guessing, in terms of the way things have gone lately. One, one of the things you, you, one of the scariest parts of the book was a meeting you had at the Pentagon in May of 1991-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Right.
Alan Colmes: -when you stopped by to see Paul Wolfowitz, who was ensconced there at the time.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Right, he was the number three guy. And I would- he'd come out to visit me earlier when we were training the National Guard to go to Iraq just before the start of the first Gulf War. And so, he said, "Come see me if you ever get by the Pentagon." Well, I was a field soldier. I got by the Pentagon finally in May, and I had an, I dropped in for a courtesy call on General Powell, and I had, (chuckles) I was literally given three minutes in his office. And so, I, I thought, 'Well, I've, I've got some time here, maybe I can-' And I thought about Paul Wolfowitz. So, we called up, and they said, "Come on up." So, Scooter Libby met me at the door and brought me in.
Alan Colmes: He was his as- aide at that time.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: First time I'd met Scooter. I'd known Paul before, even before he came out there. We'd been at a couple of conferences in the '80s. And, and, and I just said to him, "Congratulations on the success in the Gulf War." And he said, "Well, thanks," he said, "but not really, because we didn't get Saddam. He said, "President Bush," meaning George W.'s father, "President Bush believes that he'll be overthrown by his own people. I kind of doubt it." He said, "But I did, we did learn one thing," he said, "we can use force now and the Soviets won't intervene to stop us, and we've got five or ten years to clean up those old client regimes in the Middle East - Syria, and Iraq, and, and the others that have sided with the Soviets. We ought to clean them up before the next big super power comes along." Well, it was the kind of bold strategic level thinking - I, I'd been training soldiers in, you know how to maintain tanks in the desert and how to run in formations and how to do target acquisition at 3,000 meters against dug-in Iraqi tanks-
Alan Colmes: Yeah.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -and suddenly, you know, I'm back up at the geo-strategic level, and it was the kind of thing that, you know, it hits you right between the eyes. You say, 'Boy, that's a big thought!'
Alan Colmes: Yeah.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: 'BIG thought!'
Alan Colmes: So, they had these plans. I mean, he is part of-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Yeah.
Alan Colmes: -I guess the, the group that they call the 'neo-cons' who had this-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Right.
Alan Colmes: -part of Project for the New American-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Right.
Alan Colmes: Century.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Right. They didn't like it. They were being attacked by a group in the right wing of the Republican Party for not finishing the job against Saddam Hussein. You know, they started out by vilifying Saddam after he invaded and, and he was (laughs) a pretty ugly person. You remember the picture Saddam with the little kids there and intimidating them-
Alan Colmes: Yeah.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -and so forth, in October of '90. And, and then they ended up being blasted by their own teammates for not finishing the job when it was never in the cards.
Alan Colmes: Right, and-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: There was no UN resolution supporting the overthrow of to government of, of Saddam Hussein.
Alan Colmes: Well, George H.W. Bush-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: He knew better.
Alan Colmes: -along with Brent Scowcroft knew that had they gone into-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Absolutely.
Alan Colmes: -Baghdad, they would have blown to coalition apart.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Absolutely.
Alan Colmes: All the things that even Dick Cheney said in 1994 would have happened then, happened on Cheney's watch, and now he defends the very thing he said should not've happened back then.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: We were so worried about Iran in the early 1980s, we actually gave assistance to Iraq.
Alan Colmes: Right.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: We were given them intelligence. Don Rumsfeld went over and had a meeting with Saddam Hussein. The rumor is we even encouraged the Germans to give them chemical weapons technologies just to the last- I mean, it was going to be the greatest disaster in our experience in the Middle East if the Iranians broke through the Iraqis and seized control of Basra and the headwaters of the Persian Gulf. And now, now, after our invasion of Iraq, the Iranians, through their proxies in Iraq are in control of Basra.
Alan Colmes: Is Iran our big problem in Iraq right now.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Absolutely.
Alan Colmes: What are-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: It's our big problem because it's not the violence in Iraq per se. There are a lot of violent countries. The violence in terrible. Yes, it needs to be stopped. But there's a geo-strategic struggle going on. Iran is under a- it's, it's, it's operating a major push, first to seize a grip on Israel, second to gain access to the Mediterranean, and third to become a regional power through Iraq, and fourth to have nuclear weapons. That's a major, that's a major destabilization of the security regime that's emerged in that region over the last 40 years.
Alan Colmes: That sounds very frightening, and listening to the Bush administration, you almost think war with Iran is inevitable. You make the point - and you'd had an op-ed in The Washington Post just two days a go, actually yesterday and Sunday - that that's really not inevitable. And you are, in fact you've got a chapter in your book, "Diplomacy, Diplomacy, Diplomacy." But it-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Yeah, well, I think unfortunately it is inevitable almost because of the Bush administration's refusal to engage in diplomacy. What's going to happen, Alan, and what I'm very worried about is, we don't know how fast the Iranians are building the bomb. Maybe it's all a bluff. Maybe they're rug merchants. Maybe they're just, you know, bluffing and playing with us and saying, 'Hey, we got all these centrifuges.' Maybe they don't work. Okay?
Alan Colmes; The IAEA says they don't have the 3,000 centrifuges all working at the same time that Ahmadinejad says-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Okay. So-
Alan Colmes: -that they're ten years away from a nuclear capability.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Sure. And on the other hand, you know, maybe they, what they have is a secret, separate location with a bunch of other centrifuges. We don't know that. Okay? But let's say that it is a real threat. At some point, maybe next year, maybe a year after that, maybe five years from now, if we don't seriously dissuade them from moving down this path, some intelligence officer's going to be doing the President's daily brief and coming in to President Bush and saying, 'Mr. President, we've just received final con-'
Alan Colmes: President Clinton, at that point.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: President Clinton, somebody and saying to the President, 'Here's the final confirmation. There's, they're approaching the point of no return, when 50 kilograms of highly enriched uranium has been completely reprocessed, moved out of the Natanz plant or wherever and distributed. We can't get it back. If you don't strike now, they will become a nuclear power.' Now, that's what I worry about, and this administration has outsourced its diplomacy to the French and British and the Germans. It won't talk directly to Iran about these issues, but they will come to the American people and ask us to support them when they strike. And I say war is a last, last, last resort. This administration's got to do its work.
Alan Colmes: We'll take a break. When we come back, I want to quote actually from what you wrote in The Washington Post just the other day about what it is we need to do and also ask you about the MoveOn.org ad and General Petraeus testifying before the House and Senate. Wesley Clark our guest. His new book is A TIme To Lead, and it's 877-for-alan, 367-2526.
(break)
Alan Colmes: I'm Alan Colmes. Later on tonight, Chris Dodd, Connecticut Senator seeking the Democratic nomination for President as Wesley Clark did last time around. General Clark today came out in support of Hillary Rodham Clinton. He's got a new book out called A Time To Lead. You wrote in The Washington Post yesterday, "The next war would begin with an intense air and naval campaign. You're talking about Iran. Let's say you're planning the conflict as part of the staff of the Joint Chiefs. Your list of targets isn't long - a few dozen nuclear sites, but you can't risk retaliation from Tehran, 21 days from bombardment. You talk about to prevent world oil prices from soaring, you'd have to try to protect every oil and gas rig. You talk about Special Forces to penetrate deep inside the country, call in air strikes, drag the evidence of Tehran's nuclear ambitions out in the open. And then you say, "But what about the results of such a campaign? What happens after that?"
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Exactly. Well, that's the question. Nobody knows what the results of that campaign would be. There are people in the White House that I'm sure who believe, 'Awe, we'll break their back. You know, the Iranians are going around telling everybody that we wouldn't bomb So, as soon as we bomb, we'll shatter their credibility, and the leadership will say, 'Oh my goodness. We're wrong. We give up.'' I think (chuckles) that's backwards. I think what happens is when you bomb people, they get really mad at you-
Alan Colmes: Yeah.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -and people pull together. And then it's a whole bunch of 'Death to America' chanters out there. And even the people who say, 'You know, my government may have provoked this, they're real quiet and real careful, because they're going to get shot if they speak up. So, I don't see anything good happening from the bombing other than the fact that we'll delay their acquisition of a nuclear capability. I would hope that we've got a full diplomatic and political plan for how to deal with the aftermath, but looking at the administration's record, it's hard to believe we've done that.
Alan Colmes: Is there a diplomatic solution to Iran and to avoid - and you always say war is the last, last, last resort - What, how do we diplomatically approach this in a way that's going to have a satisfactory result?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: No one really knows, and you never know about diplomacy. You just don't know, and in particularly the case in Iran, because we haven't really had a serious dialog with the Iranian leadership in 30 years. So, these are all people that we don't know. We don't really know Rafsanjani. Some of the Europeans know him. They say, 'You can have a dialog with Rafsanjani,' but we don't know him, and he doesn't know us. And my experience with diplomacy is that these relationships are built up over a matter of years. They're important. This man Vitaly Churkin, who is in New York as the, he's the Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, we knew each other in Washington more than a decade ago. And these are long term relationships. You know what people stand for. We are starting at ground zero.
Alan Colmes: They've made no effort in this administration to engage with the rest of the world.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: None.
Alan Colmes: And then whoever, whoever inherits the mantle of the Presidency has to kind of start from ground zero, which is- And then whatever happens, you blame the Democrat, right, for whatever went- It seems like George W. Bush is decided to do the rope-a-dope and just the next administration will have to deal with the mess that was created by this administration.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think that's right. I think it's real hard for a President to admit the imminence of strategic failure. It's also true that Iran wasn't quite ready to call off what it was doing. We're, we're still kind of doing Iran's work for them in Iraq, you know, by going after the Ba'athists. And the President has been inadequately sensitive to this. I think he has also, he probably, if you ever would, could get him to say it, he, he probably feels mislead a little bit by the optimistic reports that people have given him over time because our, our people on the ground don't have the intelligence to really appreciate the significance of the Iranian threat.
Alan Colmes: Shouldn't the President get up and say then, 'Look, I had this report and this report and this was wrong, and that's why we did what we did-'
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: No.
Alan Colmes: '-and I'm very disappointed that this hasn't-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: No.
Alan Colmes: '-because look these reports I got that's not (inaudible)'
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Not unless he's going to fire some people. This is a President that doesn't like to fire people. But, the, the, the thing about it is that the Iranians lost something like a million people during the 1980s, because Iraq invaded them with our encouragement. Now therefore if you were an Iranian and in a leadership position, what happens inside Iraq would be in your vital national interest. You would swear, 'Now that we got rid of Saddam, we ain't ever going to have like that back-'
Alan Colmes: Mm hm.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: '-in power again, and we're going to do everything on earth-'
Alan Colmes: Yeah.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: '-to prevent it.' And so, they've flooded the zone. They've got preachers in there or, or, or clerics in there. They've got trainers in there. They've got police experts. They've got diplomats. They've got energy experts. They've kids going to college inside Iran. They're preparing. This is a major effort. Think of it like our relationship with Canada. How would be feel, feel if Canada had invaded us and we'd lost, let's say five million Americans in combat, and then someone overthrew the government of Canada. We'd be pretty happy about it, but we'd be making sure it wasn't going to happen again. So, we have to understand it's not like Iran is not interested and going to be interested in what happens in Iraq. We have to talk to Iran.
Alan Colmes: Last week, General Petraeus - We were talking about this off the air, We haven't talked about it on the air - Petraeus of course appeared. Putting a General in a position like that, which seems like a political place to be. It's now Petraeus' responsibility. It's his war. He's the guy who's got to defend the Bush policy.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Right.
Alan Colmes: It sounds like an untenable position for a General to be in.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: It's a really tough position, because the General's not in charge of the policy. The General's in charge of the numbers of troops on the ground and what they do on the ground. He's in charge of the tactics and the military operations. (clears throat) To some extent, he can work with Ambassador Crocker and reinforce Crocker's diplomatic efforts. But the policy? That's coming straight from George W. Bush. It's George Bush's war. He wanted it. He looked at the plans 22 times before they went, and it's his war. So, when General Petraeus goes up there, General Petraeus, he's loyal. He's smart. He's experienced. He's going to do the very best job he can do to handle what the President tells him to do. Think of it like the quarterback on a football team. You put a new quarterback in last part of the game, tell him to win the game, you think the quarterback's going to come back and say, 'Gee, coach, you gave me a mission that's too tough'?
Alan Colmes: Yeah.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: So-
Alan Colmes: And the script on the right is, 'Look at those horrible Democrats treating this General this badly. That means they hate the military.' And specifically Hillary Clinton who said, "Believing you would require the willing suspension of belief." So they're, "Oh, she's calling him a liar!" Which is not what she did at all.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Basically, you know, the truth's always a relative thing or almost always a relative thing, because (clears throat) people's mindset, their position, their responsibilities cover, they, they, they color the facts that they perceive. Now you can - this is psychologically proven - you can put people in a laboratory and you will find that some people will see one thing in a situation and some people will see another. And when, when President- when Senator Clinton sees the situation in Iraq, she's not sitting and wearing Dave Petraeus' uniform.
Alan Colmes: Yeah.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: She's not sitting in his chair. She's not seeing it with those responsibilities. Their perspectives are different. And, Alan, this is the essential part of American democracy.
Alan Colmes: Yeah.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: This is a Democracy. That Congress has a Constitutional duty to question the military. When I was on duty, I went over to that Congress many times, and I can tell you- and I was nonpartisan. I never belonged to a political party. I never even knew what party I would ever belong to. And I went over there and I was faced with many skeptical questions and even some outright hostility, and I'm sure that there were some Senators who were muttering about me, 'Well, that General's a blah, blah, blah, bl-blah, blah, blah.' Because I was in the cockpit. It was my problem.
Alan Colmes: We only have less than 30 seconds, but you're not to fond of MoveOn calling him 'General Betray us.'
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: No, I'm not fond of that.
Alan Colmes: That's certainly a mistake. And-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: They didn't ask me about it. I would've told them on no uncertain terms, 'Don't do that.' Look, Petraeus, God help us if we ever lose that fact that the military's loyal to the Commander In Chief. They have to be. That's their duty under law. It's up to the Congress to be smart enough to have a broader perspective and ask the tough questions.
Alan Colmes: General Clark, I was very happy you were here tonight. Thank you so much for spending time with us.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you, Alan.
Alan Colmes: Your new book A Time To Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country. General Wesley Clark just came out in support of Hillary Rodham Clinton for President. Great to see you again. Thank you so much for being here tonight.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you, Alan.
