General Wesley Clark on Fox And Friends
June 12, 2006
transcript by Reg NYC

Steve Doocy: President Bush heads up a high-profile summit on his Iraq strategy at Camp David later today - Martha watch your head - So, what can we expect to come out of this meeting? With us right now from Little Rock, Arkansas is former NATO Supreme Commander and Fox News contributor,

General Wesley Clark. Good morning to you, General.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Good morning, Steve.

Steve Doocy: When was the last time we did something like this?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK:You know, it's been a while. I mean, obviously the government did it after 9/11. But this is the kind of off-site that's really important, because it lets people get out of the normal routine of, of work in Washington, stay focused on an issue, and really look at all the ramifications. So hopefully, we're going to be talking here in this meeting. We're going to be talking about, obviously, the military success on the ground in, in getting rid of Zarqawi, the training of the Iraqis, the performance of the security forces, but also I believe the military commanders are going to be talking very strongly that they're going to need assistance on the civilian side of the Iraqi government, because the provincial governments, and even the central government, they're not functioning effectively. So, they're not actually providing services to the Iraqi people. So, from the military perspective, this is, this is not just a military problem. It's a complete governmental problem.

Steve Doocy: You're saying they need to do a better job keeping the lights on longer?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Exactly. Exactly, and to do that the United States government needs to give them some experts over there to work inside the ministries to help them figure out how to do this, and we need to get a system - they call them the Provisional Recovery Teams - the PR teams need to be out there in the provinces-

Steve Doocy: Right.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -with civilian experts helping these provincial governments provide services.

Steve Doocy: But one of the problems, General, was early on we tried to get the electricity up and the water running and building plants and schools and stuff like that, and the bad guys kept blowing things up.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, they're still doing that, and this is one of the problems that we've to face. But it's the sort of hand-in-glove problem, because you can't fix the security until you get the people on your side. You-

Steve Doocy: Right.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -can't get the people on your side if you don't have full governmental services. So, you got to do both at the same time. You can't do it sequentially.

Steve Doocy: Right. And I know that this two-day summit was scheduled before Zarqawi was killed, but the Zarqawi component does change things, doesn't it?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think it, it's proof that the intelligence is working. It's proof that our purpose in being there to strike these, this worldwide group of Islamist terrorists is, is important. And so, that's a special operations function. We've always said, the military's always said that regardless of what happens with the broad array of troops there, we're liable to be there striking terrorists for a long time, until we can be sure that the terrorists cannot use Iraq as a training base.

Steve Doocy: And the other thing is we got to make sure that there are no terrorists in the security forces. They've got some of these militia members as part of the Iraqi security team.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, this is one of the key issues that has to be worked, and frankly, there's no easy solution to this. One person's militia member is another good guy from the neighborhood. And so, this has got to be sorted through. We've got to have strong leadership in the Interior Ministry especially, and it's got to be nonsectarian leadership. This is going to be the toughest issue the government faces in the near-term.

Steve Doocy: Alright, General Wesley Clark, we thank you, sir, for joining us live from Little Rock today. Thank you, sir.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you.