General Wesley Clark on Real Time with Bill Maher
May 5, 2006
Transcript by Reg NYC

Bill Maher: ...But first, he is the retired Four-Star General who was a Democratic candidate for President in 2004 - I think he'd be a good one next time too - General Wesley Clark.
(applause)
General.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: How you doing?

Bill Maher: (pretends to shake hands than salutes instead) It's an old gag and it never gets tired. Thank you very much, for General Clark.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: (laughs) Thank you. Thank you.

Bill Maher: Okay. Alright. So first off, we have a kind of an expert here on the show. You were NATO Supreme Allied Commander.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Yeah.

Bill Maher: You know how Washington works. This was a shock today. Suddenly the CIA Head quits, because usually they don't, they don't leave this easily. I remember the old guy, George Tenet. Right. He, he stayed.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: He did well.

Bill Maher: He st- He st-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: For staying.

Bill Maher: For staying, right, but this is the guy who said the WMDs in Iraq was a slam dunk, completely missed 9/11. They couldn't get him out the door. Something's fishy with the new guy, right?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Got to be something personal.

Bill Maher: Oh, so you think it is the sex.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: That's-
(audience laughter)
normally what it means.

Bill Maher: It is, right.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I mean, I don't- I don't know. It's all speculation right now, you know. And it's-

Bill Maher: I, I'm on that page.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: The, the real sad part about it is that we need a good legal intelligence agency in America, one that obeys the law-
(applause)
-and that keeps this country safe.
(applause)
And what we don't need-

Bill Maher: Can you really have that?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: You can.

Bill Maher: Really?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Yes, and you should.

Bill Maher: Because I think- because the bad guys play dirty. Come on.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: No. You've got-

Bill Maher: They don't?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: You've got to have the law. You've got to do things- Look, you have to have an intelligence agency that protects the country, but it has to represent who we are. If it doesn't-

Bill Maher: Yeah.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: If you play by the same rules the other guy does, you make more enemies than friends. You may get a tactical victory, but you'll never win. In this struggle that we're in, it really is about can you make more friends than enemies in the world, and we're not doing a very good job of that right now.

Bill Maher: No, we're certainly not.

(applause)

And speaking of people who don't make a lot of friends, I don't know if you say Donald Rumsfeld yesterday getting heckled.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I did.

Bill Maher: He was making a speech in Atlanta, and it was interesting, one of the guys who was- he really wasn't heckling. He was just asking a question His name was Ray McGovern, and it turns out he is a 27-year-old (sic) veteran of the CIA. He's the guy who used to give Bush's father the daily CIA briefing. Okay, he got up, and he peppered Rumsfeld with all sorts of interesting questions that were right on the money. And of course, Rumsfeld had no answer for them, because he has no answer for them.

(audience laughter)

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Yeah, Ray, Ray McGovern, he did his homework.

Bill Maher: Okay, my question is, how come it takes a guy to stand up surreptitiously at a, at a, at a conference to ask these questions. Why aren't the Democrats doing that? Why aren't the press doing that?

(applause)

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: We, we've asked a lot of questions. Democrats have asked a lot of questions, but it's a competitive game. And I, and I, and I think Ray McGovern did a good job. He got his messenger out at the right time, and there's a real art to this. Because it's not that the Democrats don't have a message. We've got lots of messages, and we've got lots of messengers. What we don't have is the pure forum to do that when we need to do it.

I was in a conference on the 30th of March where we announced our National Security Agenda. And just to show you kind of the way this works, we had all of House and Senate Democrats at Union Station. We had Senator Reid and Congresswoman Pelosi there, Madeleine Albright, myself, a couple of other people. We gave the Democratic position. When President Bush heard we were going to do it, he scheduled his own briefing on Iraq at a competing forum.

He started his briefing ten minutes before ours, and he had a hundred percent network coverage. And it's a game.

Bill Maher: Oh, boo hoo. You know-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: It's a game.

Bill Maher: I, I know but, but he gives the same briefing every time.

(audience laughter)

'We're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here. They hate us for our freedom.' I always say he ought to get a parrot.

(audience laughter)

But what I want to hear from the Democrats is something very different. I don't, I don't- You said we, you had your National Security Strategy. I have to tell you, if someone woke me up in the middle of the night and said, "Hey, what's the Democrats' National Security Strategy,' I'd be a little at a loss.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: We've been , we've been all over with this strategy, Bill, and that's the honest truth.

Bill Maher: What is it?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Number one, this is a year of transition in Iraq. The Iraqis have to start taking charge.

Number two, we're going to begin responsible redeployment out of Iraq this year. Now, that's the fundamental piece there.

(applause)

Number three is, we want to use all the tools of the US power. We want to use our diplomacy. We believe the United States should be talking to everyone in the region, including countries we don't like, like Syria and Iran. We feel like it's a lot better to talk to someone before you have to bomb them.

(applause)

Now, we're big backers-

Bill Maher: People don't like getting bombed.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: They don't, and you know-

Bill Maher: Interesting.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -when you, and when you-

Bill Maher: Interesting theory.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: When you-

Bill Maher: I'll chew on that.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: When you kill people's relatives-

Bill Maher: Yes? They don't like that either.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: They, they don't like that. And so it's always better if do what, get what you want-

Bill Maher: Yeah.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -by talking first. Now this administration doesn't want to do that. So you know, I hear a lot of criticism of Democrats, because I travel around the country a lot. And that's why I want to be very clear, there's a very strong central Democratic message here. It's use force only, only, only-

Bill Maher: Alright, alright.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -as a last resort.

Bill Maher: -Are you going to be the one to be carrying that message in the 2008 Presidential election?

(applause)

There you go.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Let's talk about 2006.

Bill Maher: No, let's talk about 2008.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: No, I'll tell you why, I'll tell you why.

Bill Maher: I'm the General here now.

(audience laughter)

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I thought you were the comedian. I'm the General.

Bill Maher: No, I'm, I'm the head fellow in charge.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Yeah, okay. Well you're-

Bill Maher: No, come on. 200-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: 2006 is what it about. I'll tell you why, Bill. Because-

Bill Maher: You are insubordinate, Sir.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I'm-

(audience laughter)

No, this is what you call command courage. this is what you guys-

Bill Maher: (laughing) Yeah.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -say you want out military to have, right.

Bill Maher: Okay.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: You don't want us to take orders.

Bill Maher: Alright.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Right?

Bill Maher: Go Ahead.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Don't you want us to speak up?

Bill Maher: Go ahead. 2006.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Okay, the truth is, if you want to fix America-

Bill Maher: Yeah.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: You got to start now. You got to get Democrats in the majority in one of the two Houses of Congress.

(applause)

This year.

Bill Maher: That's true.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Hey look, the Democratic Party is loaded with talent. there's all kinds of people who want to be President-

Bill Maher: Some of them are certainly loaded.

(audience laughter)

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: There's all kinds- That was really low. That was low. I mean that was-

Bill Maher: I'm a comedian, not a General.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: That was, that was a shot- AND YOU PROVED IT!

Bill Maher: Well, let me ask you this, if they do retake the House-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Yeah.

Bill Maher: A lot of people are talking about impeachment. The reason why they have not been able to hold President Bush to any of his lapses with the Constitution is because they don't control anything. But I think there's a debate if they do start to take over the Congress, and they do control committees and so forth, do you spend the energy impeaching this man. I don't think anybody doubts that he deserves it.

(applause)

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, how about if we just spend a little bit of energy getting the facts out to the American people. Let's just find out what happened and why and how we can do better the next time. Let's fix the intelligence community. Let's-

Bill Maher: Right.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -get a national energy policy that works and gets us out of our excessive dependence on overseas energy.

Bill Maher: Okay.

(applause)

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Let's get serious about global warming in this country. Let's fix education and healthcare and get a national strategy that the American people can rally behind. All that can come if we start with the facts, and starting with the facts means Democrats asking questions with the power of the majority of one House of Congress.

Bill Maher: So, you ARE running for President. General Wesley Clark everybody.