General Wesley Clark on Fox News
January 8, 2006
Transcription by Melange

Alisyn Camerota: Joining us is General Wes Clark, Fox News Contributor and former commander of NATO. Thanks for being here, General.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Good to be with you, Allison.

Alisyn Camerota: Ok, so the most recent estimates we have are 28 U.S. forces killed in the past week and about 130 Iraqis. Is this just a particularly bad week or a harbinger of something worse happening?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well I think what is clear about it is that the insurgency hasn't fundamentally altered its course despite the elections. So, we've got a window of opportunity to change the political system in Iraq - to modify the constitution to bring the Sunnis in, and have the Sunnis reach out and take the steam out of the insurgency. So far that hasn't happened. You know, it's very common in this region that people will talk and fight simultaneously so it's not unusual to expect that there will be Sunni representatives in the Parliament and there will be an armed wing of the same group of people continuing the civil war or the insurgency. I think the actions are more important than the labels. I think the labels aren't as important here as understanding what's really going on. This is a group of people fighting to prevent the Shi'ites, backed by Iran, from taking over the country.

Alisyn Camerota: And yet, I mean, it does seem that there is still so much tension between the Shi'ites and the Sunnis and I know that you say that labels aren't important but when you hear the word 'civil war', everybody gets nervous. Is that a big concern there?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well it is a big concern. It…we call it more like sectarianism in that the Shi'ites and the Sunnis are rivals. They've been rivals for power for 80 years inside Iraq. That rivalry continues now. When the United Stated intervened we turned the tables on the Sunnis. We put them in the minority position, we gave the power to the Shi'as, we went to the Shi'a clerics and asked for their help. We got their help. We're on the side of the Shi'as, whether we intended to be or not, in this sectarian conflict in Iraq. And the sectarian tensions have risen and the election proved that the people there are basically voting along sectarian lines.

Alisyn Camerota: Okay so what can the U.S. do to decrease those tensions?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: First we've got to really lean on the Shi'a politicians to invite Sunni representatives into the government that's going to be formed. Secondly, we've got to modify the constitu…they've got to modify the constitution so that the oil revenues go to the state, not to the local region that's controlled by the Shi'as. Third, they've got to be sure that the Shi'as don't have the authority to form a sort of semi-autonomous government in the south. And fourth, the institutions of government, like the interior ministry and the military have to be non-sectarian. Right now they're pretty much in Shi'a control.

Alisyn Camerota: I want to ask you about a New York Times article that was published yesterday which said that 80% of the U.S. forces who have suffered…who died, actually, from chest wounds didn't have to had only they had the right body armor. Do you agree?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Yeah, I do. I do. We've been very worried about this for a long time. This is in a record…this historic underinvestment in the protection of individual soldiers and marines. It's been going on for 25 years, really since Vietnam. We knew when we came out of Vietnam that the key thing was the body count, how many people we'd lost. And yet we invested in armor, ah, armored vehicles, uh, high tech weaponry, missiles, radars, ah, infrared imagery but we didn't put enough money into the protection of the lives of the individual soldiers and marines on the battlefield.

Alisyn Camerota: Okay, General Wesley Clark, thank you for being with us today.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you.