General Wesley Clark on the Michael Medved Show

September 17, 2007
Transcription by Melange

Voiceover: And now America's number one show on pop culture and politics. This is the Michael Medved Show.

Michael Medved: And another great day in this greatest nation on earth and a great day to get serious about what might be our next war or our next war after that and who better to talk to about that than a 4-star general in the US Army, someone who has actually commanded our troops in a war that uh, at least in purely military terms, was highly successful – the war against Serbia over Kosovo. Wesley Clark was a presidential candidate, he was general and chief of NATO forces. Uh, he is the author of a new book called A Time to Lead, for Duty, Honor and Country, a book that appears at a time when uh, General Clark has just endorsed Hillary Clinton for President of the United States and there's also an endorsement quote from President Bill Clinton, with whom General Clark served that says, "A powerful story of how America empowered a young boy to become a man, a soldier and a hero." General Clark, thanks for agreeing to speak with us.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Michael, thank you – I'm happy to be here.

Michael Medved: My pleasure indeed. You also have a provocative piece that just appeared in the Washington Post that distills and crystallizes some of the lessons that you talk about in A Time to Lead. And, you talk in the book about the lessons that you learned at different stages of your life and it's an amazing American story. What's the primary lesson that you took out of your very, very hard scrabble boyhood in Arkansas?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, that you've got to have the courage to dream. Not everybody has that. I was lucky. I mean, I guess the story I told about being popped on the tail by the swimming coach because I didn't do the time I was supposed to do; and he said, he said to me, he said ... I was supposed to do a 1:12 point 4 to make it to this meet and I had ... I just didn't perform in the time trials, he said ... he said before we all swam, he said, “anybody who doesn't make his time is going to get a pop for each tenth of a second that they miss it,” and I missed it by ten tenths of a second. He hit me ten times on the tail with a wet towel and I was twelve years old and I'd never really been hit before and I didn't like it. And it stunned me and it humiliated me and it made me feel terrible, but it also made me mad and it ... it affected me in some way I can't quite explain. And the next time I got up there, I improved my time by almost two seconds and I made it to the meet. And he told me, he said “your biggest problem in life,” he says, “is you. You don't believe that you are capable of doing what you could do.” I think, if there's one single lesson to give to Americans, is that American dream – we're all capable of greatness. Sometimes you've got to get popped on the tail to realize it but we're great people and every American has that opportunity and I hope they'll take it.

Michael Medved: General, you were a candidate for President of the United States uh, in the ... the year 2004. As a candidate for President, would you have sanctioned that kind of corporal punishment by a gym coach against a ... or do you think we are a better country because we've moved into an era of political correctness where someone could lose a whole career if he popped you in the tail with a towel?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: <laughter> Well, I don't sanction ... you know, because it gets carried to excess. And I can tell you that when I got home and I told my mother what had happened, she was livid about it. But what it did to me was it ... it changed me in some way. I can't explain ... I've got two or three other stories of this same swimming coach that every one of them made my mother furious, but nevertheless, he was a leader and he somehow, you know, gave me a challenge and helped me to overcome it and it changed my life.

Michael Medved: You know, of course, what I'm thinking of here is the number three movie in the country this weekend. It's a movie called Mr. Woodcock which is with Billy Bob Thornton playing that kind of abusive gym coach who actually ends up motivating people to some extent. I take it you have not seen this film?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I didn't see the film unfortunately I was tied up over the weekend. I've just been going crazy over this article and other things, but ... but you know, sometimes odd things that you wouldn't condone, work. And some things that you would condone, don't work. I mean, if I had been popped several times, it wouldn't have had any impact on me at all and I would have probably quit the swimming team and would have considered him an abusive coach, but the fact was that at that point, at that age, at that time, even though I found it incredibly humiliating, it was also incredibly liberating in some sense and it made me try so much harder the next time, without ... I mean, it just freed me from my fear.

Michael Medved: Well the message was, there are very clear standards and you knew what they were and you knew ...

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well the message was, that you know, you need to stop worrying about yourself and start you know, just forget about worry and just do what you're capable of.

Michael Medved: How would you apply that to national policy right now?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think that some lessons don't apply quite the same to nations as they do to people but what I'd say is that in this country, we've got to do everything we can to help our young people and give them a chance. You know, one of the things I had growing up was I had a really strong mother and she forced me to go to the dentist and she made sure my health was okay and she paid attention to my education and she didn't have any money, but she had really strong standards, especially for me and she wasn't ... she didn't force them on me by spanking or anything like that – I never got spanked, but what she did do was she communicated to me what her expectations were in a way that I wanted to meet them. And I think, when I see young people today in America who don't have ... kids who don't have health insurance, kids that don't go to a dentist, young adults who've never been to a dentist in their lives and have cavities all through their teeth, I think my God, what a shocking, terrible thing it is and how we as the wealthiest country in the world can't somehow organize ourselves to get this done for people. That's, to me I think, the way that translates to America.

Michael Medved: Was that part of your thinking? Because one of the stories that you tell ... the book is called A Time to Lead, the author is General Wesley K. Clark. Is that part of the thinking that led you to identify as a Democrat? You tell the story in the book how you and your wife Gert really didn't see yourselves as Republicans or Democrats, you were just Army.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Right. Exactly.

Michael Medved: I mean, that was your life, serving the country. And then you actually talked to Democrats and talked to Republicans. What was it about the Democrats that led you to identify with that party, General?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think I was more comfortable that the Democrats cared for the little guy. Because in the military, when you get the big brass on your shoulder and you're wearing all the rank and the US on the collar and all that stuff, you realize that you're only there because it's the United States of America and they've given you that authority by law, but the people that win the battles are not the majors and the colonels – they can lose the battle, but they can't win it. The battle's won at the individual soldier level – the soldier with the gun, the soldier driving the truck, the soldier fixing the helicopter. If they don't perform, all the fancy graphics and all the great briefings that the generals do don't mean anything. And so, what I saw was um, one party that paid more attention to the little guy, the person who didn't have the resources necessarily to do everything for themselves, but was trying hard. Those people are the people that the Democratic party seemed to care about more, to me, than the Republicans and that's why I became a Democrat.

Michael Medved: 1-800-955-1776 is our phone number and your opportunity to speak directly to General Wesley K. Clark. He has recently endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton for President of the United States and I know that there are people in the Clinton camp who think that a Clinton–Clark ticket would be the way to go for the Democratic party. Are you open to that General? Is that one of the reasons for the timing of your book and your endorsement?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Actually, it had nothing to do with it. First, the timing of the book was that for about two years, a West Point classmate named Tom Carhart had been telling me, “Wes, you know you ran for president, you've written these two books, they're all full of policy talk. Average people, they don't get it – they're not on the inside of Washington. Just tell us so that the rest of us can figure out what you did with your life and you must have done some amazing stuff, so tell us about it.” So Tom happens to be a writer. He's written some great books about military history and he's written a book on the Gulf war and another one on the Battle of Gettysburg and some other things and so I said, “well fine, I mean, I'll do it if you'll be my ghost writer” so I wrote the draft on blackberry and sent it to Tom and he worked it and it just took me a year or so to get started on it and finally last fall we said you know, look – this is it, we're going to finally get this thing done. So we did. That's the timing. As far as the endorsement was concerned, I looked really hard at running but I couldn't meet my preconditions and finally it became clear that I wasn't going to run and I still believe in this country a lot. I've known Hillary Clinton for a long time. I've known her, I've known him, and I've watched them under enormous pressure and stress in the White House. I've watched them learn, I've watched them grow. She's smart, she works hard and so it was a natural thing for me to say she should be president.

Michael Medved: And he, General Clark, has just written about the next President potentially facing a war with Iran. What should we know about that war? We'll get to that. We'll also get to a confession that I'm going to make to General Wesley Clark, the author of A Time to Lead. General Wesley Clark, a 4-star general who served his country honorably and well in the United States Army, was a Rhodes Scholar after his time at West Point and of course, the commanding General of NATO during the war for Kosovo. Ah, his book is called A Time to Lead, For Duty, Honor and Country and General Clark, before we go to our callers, uh, I do need to make a confession to you and I hope you'll indulge me.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well I guess ... you know, I'll try now. I'm not big on confessions, but go ahead.

Michael Medved: Alright. The confession is this, sir. Uh, I was a very outspoken critic of your presidential campaign and I was frankly contemptuous of it and um, I'm not contemptuous of your book. I think your book is fascinating reading and makes some very important points. During your presidential campaign, I referred to you very regularly in a way that disturbed our listeners and I got huge complaints about it ... I referred to you as “Weasley Clark” and uh, because I ... I felt that during the time you were running for president that there were some issues that you were dodging and were handling in a less than straightforward manner. And, I want to make that clear and open to you because I'm sure that if I didn't, one of the callers would call up and say, “General, do you know what Medved called you behind your back?”

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: No, I didn't know you had called me that, but I mean I got a lot of flack from a lot of people, but let me ask you – is this an apology or just a confession?

Michael Medved: It's a confession.

<laughter>

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Maybe we need to talk about it more because you may need to do an apology as well.

Michael Medved: Well I'll tell you why I'd like to try to defend myself against doing an apology is because one of the big questions and I'm sure we're going to get into this is the recent disrespect for General Petraeus who's your fellow 4-star general. And people made a pun on his name, saying General Petraeus has become General Betray Us. I would suggest that when you were running for President, you were a political candidate – you had already left the military uh, as we do in the United States. We don't have uh, active duty generals running for office.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: We haven't since MacArthur.

Michael Medved: Well yeah, he didn't actually declare a candidacy. He was kind of an undeclared candidate, wasn't he?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: He worked it really hard in 1948.

Michael Medved: Yeah. But uh ... again, without throwing his hat into the ring as you did and I would submit and I hope you would agree General, that I never, ever would have called you “General Weasley Clark,” you'll pardon me, while you were serving our country and commanding our troops. Uh, but you understand that in the rough and tumble of politics, there's all kinds of nasty things that get said back and forth and I hope that won't prevent us from talking with respect and um, uh ... civility

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Michael, you've been respectful and civil so far, but insofar as you talk about people's political views, anything I guess is fair game. It's okay, I mean it happens. Although I'd like to see a more respectful tone in politics. I'd like to see the personal side taken out of it and I'd like to see more talk about the issues because anybody who runs for the presidency, and I'm not talking about myself, but these people have worked years and years and years for this, even a guy like Kucinich or Gravel or somebody like this – these are all worthy people who have something to offer. They wouldn't be running. People believe in them and I think they merit respect and one of the things I've been disturbed about in the American political system is that really since the 1980s, the level of discourse - civil discourse, has just gotten awful. I think senators should be able to be friends across party lines. I think people should be respectful of each other and uh, Michael, I have to tell you, there's a whole lot of disrespect out there for this political system, starting with disrespect for the President, uh, members of Congress, the Senate, people who run for office and it's ... you can disagree with people's policies, but they're not crooks. I mean, these are all, with a very few exceptions, they're all honorable people who are just ... they have different views. Don't you agree?

Michael Medved: I do. And, actually that's a point that I've made. I think that for anybody to go into politics, and you know this having been a presidential candidate, it's a sacrificial undertaking.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: You bet.

Michael Medved: You don't go into it to make money. You don't go into it to gain power. You go into it on the same basis that you went into your Army service, to try to serve the country. And by the way, I've had Senator Gravel has been a guest on this show. We've invited all of the Democratic candidates. We have had virtually all of the Republican candidates and uh ... again, it's one of those things where during the time you were running for president, we would have been glad to have you, but for some reason, active Democratic candidates seem to be allergic to coming on talk radio and I wish that that would change. By the way, I hope that you would put in a word with uh, with Senator Clinton, who's my former law school classmate, to ah, to ... to join us in civil conversation.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I'll see what I can do.

Michael Medved: Thank you General. Let's go to Yvonne in San Diego. You're on the Michael Medved Show with General Wesley Clark.

Yvonne: Hi, good afternoon. I just have a question. Listening to the general talk about his mother and knowing his military career, it kind of seems to me as far as I know the military fosters an idea of responsibility – you're responsible for your actions, you know your duty and you need to follow a sort of set of instructions or a code of conduct and it seems like his mother also <inaudible> expectations – you meet them and this is what is expected. So, that's why I find it so hard to think that our elected government tells people, ‘this is what you need to do' or to <inaudible> them instead of people who just do what they need to do because that's the right thing.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well I don't think the government should be ... I think the government should be the least government that's required to protect the rights of individuals from the tyranny of the majority and to protect people from others. I'm in favor of sort of minimalist government. Government should do as little as is necessary but it should do it well and efficiently. So government has to provide for the common defense. Government has to regulate interstate commerce. Government has to have a code of laws. Government has to collect taxes, but I think when it comes to the bedroom issues, I don't like bedroom issues in government and I think that we've got to be really careful when we mix law and morality and try to compel people to do things that are morally right. I think it's a slippery slope out there. So I think our Founding Fathers had it right – I mean, this Constitution was set up to preserve liberty. It was to restrain an overpowering executive and um, the greatest threat of an overpowering executive is in a time of war because in a time of war, executives encroach on civil liberties. It happened in Rome, and it's happening today in America and I think that's one of the prime issues in this coming election.

Michael Medved: Yvonne, thanks for the call. General, how do you comport ... we'll get to this as soon as we come back, your belief in limited government, in government only doing what is absolutely necessary, with your endorsement in the book of a single-payer system for healthcare? You say we need to transition from workplace-centered to single-payer healthcare, which means big government, doesn't it or am I missing something? We'll be right back with the author of A Time to Lead, for Duty, Honor and Country, 4-star General Wesley K. Clark.

Thirty four minutes after the hour. On the Michael Medved Show joined by General Wesley K. Clark who served his country with great distinction in the United States Army. The book is called A Time to Lead, for Duty, Honor and Country and it is General Clark's own story which is a pretty amazing American story, how the son of an impoverished widow goes on to become one of our nation's most successful generals. And, the book also includes some policy prescriptions and General, that's what I wanted to ask you about. Right before the break, you were articulating what sounded like a pretty conservative view of government. You said government should only do what's absolutely necessary and yet in the pages of your book, you suggest that we should move toward a single-payer healthcare system where the government basically administers it. Is there a contradiction?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: There are a couple things wrong with the system right now, the private enterprise system that we've had. You know, it began with ... first of all, there wasn't healthcare insurance in this country before – you just paid for the doctor when you went there. Then it got too expensive for people to pay the doctors and during the ... right after the second World War, the unions said, instead of giving us pay raises, give us some benefits and so ... especially the big automobile unions went in and hit up their employers for healthcare benefits and so benefits became a big deal and it seemed to have more value than it cost but now as the cost of medical care has gone up so much, healthcare benefits cost more than their value in retaining a workforce. And so, especially when your cost of living's going up three and four percent a year and your healthcare insurance costs are going up six and seven percent a year, people don't get pay raises, they just get their continuation of healthcare. It ... it's gotten to be a real burden for the automobile industry and they're having to compete – they're putting fifteen hundred dollars per car into health insurance and trying to compete with Japan. So it's a real burden for the American worker to keep our automobile industry going. So that's one problem. Another problem is we've got 45 million Americans who don't have health insurance, including 9 million children and it's just not that easy to get ... see, the thing about health insurance is that it's actually done for the profit motive, but unlike life insurance, where you and the insurance company have the same interests, in health insurance you don't. In life insurance, you pay money and when you die, money's paid back to your family. Well, you want to live for a long time and the insurance company wants you to live for a long time and it's pretty simple. But in health insurance, you pay money and they reimburse you if you're sick so they want you to be healthy, they don't want you to be sick, but if you get really sick, they don't want to insure you or if they do, they want you to move on plan pretty quickly – either get well or get off their rolls. And so, the profit motive is not exactly the best guarantor of good health insurance for all segments of the population and that's the problem. And that's why we need to move toward more federal, single-payer support for the system. It's more equitable, it's more comprehensive, you can do larger risk-pool sharing and you can reduce the cost of medical care for everybody.

Michael Medved: General, you've done an excellent job making the argument and I understand the argument, but don't you see a contradiction between everything that you've just said and the idea the government should only do what is absolutely necessary?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, let me ask you this – do you think it's absolutely necessary that every child in America have health insurance? Or do you think it's okay that 9 million kids don't have it?

Michael Medved: I don't think it's necessary that every child in America have health insurance, I think it's necessary that every child in America have health care.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, okay, but if they don't have ... if their parents don't have health insurance, then the healthcare they're going to get is through an emergency room so I'd ...

Michael Medved: Or through Medicaid or

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think it's a lot better if you get preventive healthcare, especially as a child, than if you only get acute healthcare, when there's an emergency.

Michael Medved: Alright.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: So, I think it's a question of whether you think that's really essential or not. I think it is really essential because I think ... again, this is why I'm a Democrat, I think you've got to take care of people at the bottom of the economic pyramid. They're the people who are going to make the country great – that's where your opportunity comes from, that's where ... I was one of those people as a kid growing up and I never forget where I came from and that's why I think that you know, we just have to really work hard to make sure that every American has access to what's required so they can have equal opportunity. So, I don't think there's any contradiction.

Michael Medved: Let's go quickly to Jack in Seattle. You're on the Michael Medved Show with ... oh, we have 20 seconds? You know what, we'll go back to Jack in Seattle in just a moment. We are speaking to Wesley Clark, General Wesley Clark, the author with Tom Carhart of A Time to Lead. He's recently endorsed uh, Hillary Clinton. Now, could this have something to do with some ... honestly, haunting parallels in his life, not to her life, but to the life of her husband, President Bill Clinton who's also endorsed General Clark's book. General Wesley Clark, he's the author of A Time to Lead, for Duty, Honor and Country. General, before we go to our callers, one of the things that is striking in reading you book is, you're a friend and colleague of President Clinton, you served under his command when he was Commander in Chief in the war in Kosovo and you talk about coming to the White House for the first time and getting ... advising the President about Somalia and other things. It's so striking because there can't be that many Rhodes Scholars from Arkansas. You're a Rhodes Scholar, went to Oxford; President Clinton from Arkansas and a Rhodes Scholar. And, you both uh, are uh, people who grew up uh, having lost your fathers at a very young age. President Clinton's father died before President Clinton was born; your father died when you were 4 and both taking new names when you were ... have you gone over these parallels with the President?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: No, I never have.

Michael Medved: Does that ... it's occurred to you, though, I mean, he was originally William Blythe, you were originally ...

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Yeah, in a sort of idol way, yes, but I don't see any deep significance in it.

Michael Medved: Alright. I appreciate your intimacy and candor in your book. It's called A Time to Lead. Let's go to Jack in Seattle. You're on the Michael Medved Show with General Clark.

Jack: Okay. Thanks Mike for taking my call and General, I really appreciate what you're doing. I couldn't agree more with what you've said. I um ... my concern is Social Security primarily, and I'd like to hear what you have to say about that and um, I worry if we have another four, possibly even eight years of a Republican administration. You know ... it seems like they're going to roll us back to a state of nature, the way they're unraveling government programs.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, Social Security has been a big target in the Republican lexicon of problems for a long time because they believe it encourages people not to save. I think Social Security is an essential part of most Americans' retirement plan. They expect it and I think it'll be there for us. It's true that if you look out to the years 2044 or 2048, somewhere in there, depending on the growth of the economy, the rate of inflation, how many new workers come in and a lot of other assumptions, at some point, you start taking more out of Social Security trust funds than you put in and by that time you start running low. But, on the other hand, this is a pretty easy problem to fix and we're already in the process of fixing it, because we have raised the ceiling on Social Security withholding from $90,000 to I think it's $95,000 or $96,000 this year. It's going to go on up, a little beyond that and so it increases the amount that's put into the Social Security trust fund and it doesn't take much of a raise for very long to fix Social Security. The real problem is Medicare and the Medicare is a much more immediate problem than Social Security. And so that starts by having a new approach to healthcare in America. It means much more focus on preventive and diagnostic care. It means changing the incentives for insurance companies to offer preventive and diagnostic care rather than acute care. It means encouraging medical innovation in preventive and diagnostic care and so forth. And, I'm in the investment banking business right now and one of my companies does a whole lot of work in the life sciences – I understand exactly how these incentive programs work and how government funding works and how it drives R&D in medical technology area. And, we could just do a lot more in this area of preventive and diagnostics and I think that's the goal. I mean, we want every American to live longer, but to be healthier longer when they're alive and that's the best way to get a grip on healthcare costs.

Michael Medved: Thanks for your call, Jack. Let's go to Carl in Chicago. You're on the Michael Medved Show with General Clark.

Carl: Hi. Good afternoon. The problem that I have is that when I hear phrases like ‘government should be as small as necessary,' is that the Democrats don't ever think the government is small enough or big enough. It seems that there's always the Democrat solution to getting into more of my pockets, taking more of my money, redistributing more of my wealth and quite frankly, I disagree with the healthcare issue. I don't think the healthcare costs are entirely system driven because of the doctors. I think that we need tort reform. Nobody's talking about the trial lawyers and all the pockets they're into in Congress and as a president, I didn't agree with your statement ... as a candidate for president, and I don't hear that from Hillary either. I think ...

Michael Medved: Okay, let's give General Clark a chance to respond. What about the need for tort reform, General?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: It's a lot of issues. Yes, we could do better on tort reform. We need to fix it so that there are tougher standards applied especially in class action lawsuits. But, if you look at what drives up medical costs, it's not just the threat of a lawsuit. It's part of it, but it's a smaller part of it. It's a whole lot of other factors in the healthcare system, including 45 million uninsured, um, the way that the public hospitals are funded in America, how Medicaid funding has been cut, how doctors distribute their effort uh, there's a whole systems approach that's required. We need a new kind of medicine we call evidence-based medicine – that is to say, we need to figure out what works and reinforce what works. That means collecting data and that means protecting people's privacy as you get that information.

Michael Medved: It's one of the things that's discussed in the pages of A Time to Lead, the new book from Wesley K. Clark, 4-star general. We'll conclude the conversation with General Clark and your calls, coming up.

I think ... were we disconnected with General Clark? We're trying to get him back on. Um, he is the author of A Time to Lead, for Duty, Honor and Country. That's the title of his new book. He, of course, the 4-star general who ran for president the last time out in 2004. He is not a candidate for president this time – he thought about it, as he acknowledges in his book, but he has endorsed uh, Hillary Rodham Clinton. He said in a statement that came out yesterday, “she will be a great leader for the United States of America and a great Commander in Chief for the men and women in uniform. Let's go to your call, Scott in Everett – you're on the Michael Medved Show with General Clark.

Scott: General Clark and Mr. Medved, thank you very much. Uh, General Clark, my question to you is is this last week, an organization that was started to defend President Clinton, who's very closely associated with the Clintons, came out and attacked General Petraeus in a very disgusting manner and Senator Clinton was asked very pointedly, would you distance yourself from that and she refused. Now, as a friend and advisor, how can you as a former general, not say to her, you need to distance yourself from this disgusting ad that attacked General Petraeus and uh, basically, how can you not distance yourself?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: First of all, she didn't have anything to do with the ad, but secondly

Scott: That doesn't matter, she ...

Michael Medved: Let him answer, Scott.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Here's the point. Here's the point. When we should be talking about Iraq and the troops in Iraq, we should be talking about the serious issues in front of the country, this has been a tremendous distraction. Okay? It's over. It was wrong. It shouldn't have been done, but let's get on with the issue at hand, the serious business. It's not name-calling. It's not calling back in response to name-calling – it's trying to work through the issues and the issue here is we're not succeeding in Iraq. We're not succeeding despite the troops we've got there, we haven't been able to produce political progress in there. So, supporting the troops is not enough. We've got to find a better strategy and uh, in that, I think we've got to talk to Iran. In the region, we've got to make a major diplomatic push. We've got to find out what it takes to unravel some of the mysteries and confusion and the bungling that's gone on in Iraq.

Michael Medved: You ... you, in your article in the Washington Post, General, you talk about the possibility of war against Iran. Do you believe that that is in any sense inevitable?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, it's inevitable if Iran doesn't change their policy and move away from nuclear weapons, absolutely and they better know it. They're going to get hit. They're not going to be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Absolutely not.

Michael Medved: And you would support, uh, if that was the only alternative, you say in your book, war should always be the last, last alternative, but if it were?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Sure, but look, the point is it isn't. Because this administration hasn't even tried real diplomacy with Iran. What I'm worried about is that some guy's going to walk in to the President at some point and say, Mr. President or Madam President, um, the time's come, if we don't strike right now ...

Michael Medved: The time has come for us ...