General Wesley Clark on Fox & Friends

March 17, 2006
Transcript by Reg NYC

ED Hill: Fox News Military analyst General Wesley Clerk joins us from Little Rock, Arkansas. Great to have you with us.


GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you. Good to be with you.


ED Hill: Let me start by saying what the conspiracy theorists are coming up with, and that that is, 'Iraqi's, what Iraqis? This is all Americans doing it. Don't buy the hype.' That's why the administration didn't allow journalists. What your response?


GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, it sounds like, and of course the operational details of this ... on all of this would be classified, but this sounds like three Iraqi battalions and a brigade. They're trained well enough to conduct an air assault, which means they get on the helicopters. They're put into differing landing zones in an insurgent area. They move out. They're under their own command and control, and they conduct military operations. There's a fourth battalion, which is a US battalion, part of the 101st Airborne Division. The helicopters are flown by the Americans, coordinated by the Americans, but the Iraqis are directing their own operations. They've probably got some American advisors. They've got command and control, American command and control teams to communicate with the helicopters and the air support and maybe the artillery.

ED Hill: And we-


GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: But this shows progress.


ED Hill: We do have video coming in from the scenes right now. This is new video.


Steve Doocy: Unedited.


ED Hill: Unedited. So, be cautioned, but new video coming in showing the American and, I want to stress, Iraqi troops.


Steve Doocy: And General, I don't know if you have a monitor there, but if you do- Do you have a monitor?


GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Yes, I do.


Steve Doocy: Cou- Tell us what we're looking at.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: You're looking at a guy- this is a command and control team, probably an American. He's working with the Iraqis. The Iraqis are searching areas. They're looking for people who are there. They're orienting themselves on the terrain. They're moving from one objective to another. They're searching. We ran these kind of operations during Vietnam also. We've run them a lot with Americans. Here's somebody finding an expended round.


Steve Doocy: Mm hm.


GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Looks like a 25 millimeter round.


Steve Doocy: Right. And they're going door to door. They're, I mean, they're-


GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Door to door.


Steve Doocy: They're, they're trying to be very thorough, because the only way to find the bad guys and the bad stuff is to go door to door.


GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Right. You're looking for evidence that these people are engaged in actions they shouldn't be in. Now, this kind of an operation shows progress in training the Iraqi forces militarily, and it shows close cooperation between the Americans and Iraqi forces. What it doesn't resolve, of course, is the major political problem in the country,-


ED Hill: Yeah.


GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -which is the split between the Sunnis and the Shi'ites.


ED Hill: Let me ask you about something that I think gets a little sticky. We just are, have been watching video of clearly are some suspects being lead away. They're going door to door. You know, some of the criticism has been that as US and Iraqi troops go through, they pull in innocent civilians along with suspected terrorists. How do you determine one from the other when you're fresh onto the scene.


GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well there's no way to, to know definitively unless you catch the guy in the act of shooting at you, but look, these people obviously had some weapons. They'll say the weapons were there for self-defense. They picked them up, whatever. These are not weapons that, that we're issuing. These are AK-47s and, and their derivatives that are used by the insurgents. Now these people have got to be identified.


Steve Doocy: Right.


GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Their actions have to be looked at and, and they'll be put into a matrix. People will say, 'Who is this person.'


Steve Doocy: Mm hm.


GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: 'Who's he associate with?' and they'll try to establish-


Steve Doocy: Gotcha.


GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -whether they're part of an insurgent network or not.


Steve Doocy: Alright, General Wesley Clark joining us from Little Rock, Arkansas with the play-by-play as we got the new video. General, thanks very much.


GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Alright, thanks. Good to be with you.