Military Readiness

4/8/08 - General Wesley Clark on the Lionel Show on Air America Radio

General Wesley Clark on the Lionel Show on Air America Radio

April 8, 2008
We encourage you to listen to the clip

General Wesley Clark on the Lionel Show on Air America Radio

April 8, 2008

transcript by Reg NYC

Lionel: General Wesley Clark joins us right now. General Clark, at ease, Sir.

GENERAL WELSEY CLARK: Hey, great to be with you, Lionel. Thank you-

Lionel: General Clark, it is a pleasure again-

GENERAL WELSEY CLARK: (inaudible) Thanks, thanks for supporting our veterans and bringing up this point. This is, this is a critical point right now. Everybody's talking about how long the forces are going to stay and getting them home. That's all foreign policy. It's good, but I'm worried about the people in the military. And, and our young people when they come home and they get out, they need a chance to get reintegrated into American life. We know how to do it. It's to give them an opportunity to go to college, but the current GI Bill doesn't do the job. It's unbelievable.

Lionel: Why? What does it, what does it provide for?

GENERAL WELSEY CLARK: It doesn't pay enough.

3/24/08 - General Wesley Clark on Tavis Smiley

General Wesley Clark on Tavis Smiley (PBS)

March 24, 2008
Transcript by Reg NYC

Tavis Smiley: General Wesley Clark served as NATO Supreme Allied Commander from 1997 to 2000 and then went on to seek the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2004. His most recent book is A Time To Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country. He joins us tonight from New York. General Clark, nice to have you back on the program, Sir.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you, Tavis. Nice to be with you.

Tavis Smiley: Let me go right at it. What do you make of the fact that we've been there five years now and as of Easter Sunday, 4000 dead?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, first of all, my heart goes out to the families and to the men and women in uniform who have volunteered and served in this country and done it so courageously. It's just a terrible burden we're putting on the men and women in the Armed Forces and their families, and I think about them first. No one would've believed, Tavis, that if we had said five years ago that five years later we'd have more troops in Iraq then we did to do the invasion AND that we'd have lost 4000 fine young men and women, no one would've believed it. It's been a war we didn't have to fight. It's been a war that's been mismanaged. The- been an excessive and over-reliant on the military, a lack of good policy in the region. We've alienated our friends around the world, and we've served as a cause for Al Qaeda recruiting. And the, the real winner of the war is, so far, has been Iran.

11/28/07 - General Wesley Clark on the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC

General Wesley Clark on the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC

November 28, 2007
We encourage you to listen to the clip

General Wesley Clark on the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC

November 28, 2007
transcript by Reg NYC

Brian Lehrer: How about a Hillary Clinton/Wesley Clark ticket? How about another war in Kosovo. Brian Lehrer on WNYC, good morning everyone. After the news former NATO Commander Wesley Clark. He served under President Clinton, now campaigning for Hillary Clinton. Among other things, he is predicting that President Bush will declare victory in Iraq, complete with a parade, and believe it or not, he calls for sending more U.S. troops to the Balkans now, which he says could again become a major security threat.

General Wesley Clark is with me, the former NATO Commander under President Clinton, who ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2004. This year, he's supporting Hillary Clinton and has been campaigning with her, fueling speculation he could even be her running mate. General, it's so nice to have you with us. Welcome to WNYC.

11/12/07 - General Wesley Clark on MSNBC News Live (3 segments)

General Wesley Clark on MSNBC News Live

November 12, 2007 1:45 PM
Transcript by Reg NYC

Kris: Congress is putting the finishing touches on this year's Defense Spending Bill. 8.7 billion dollars will be going to high tech missile defense systems. So, why spend so much cash on conventional weapons while fighting an unconventional war on terror? That's the question for MSNBC military analysts retired Four-Star General Wesley Clark and retired U.S. Army Colonel Jack Jacobs. General Clark let me start with you.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Mm hm.

Kris: Why this renewed focus on these missile defense systems?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, it's not renewed. I mean, we've been focusing for a decade or more on high-altitude air defense, on intercepting missiles in flight. The question was: How high can you intercept them and how long a range missile can you intercept, because the longer range they are the faster they are? So, you have to have better technology. The technology's getting better, and the first systems are being deployed now, and there's discussion of a system of deployment in Europe. So, I think this is part of prudent defense planning. It's gone on for a long time, started in the Clinton administration. It's still moving forward.

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Op-Ed: The Next War

The Next War

It's always looming. But has our military learned the right lessons from this one to fight it and win?

By Wesley K. Clark

Washington Post | Sunday, September 16, 2007; B01

Testifying before Congress last week, Gen. David H. Petraeus appeared commanding, smart and alive to the challenges that his soldiers face in Iraq. But he also embodied what the Iraq conflict has come to represent: an embattled, able, courageous military at war, struggling to maintain its authority and credibility after 4 1/2 years of a "cakewalk" gone wrong.

Petraeus will not be the last general to find himself explaining how a military intervention has misfired and urging skeptical lawmakers to believe that the mission can still be accomplished. For the next war is always looming, and so is the urgent question of whether the U.S. military can adapt in time to win it.

Today, the most likely next conflict will be with Iran, a radical state that America has tried to isolate for almost 30 years and that now threatens to further destabilize the Middle East through its expansionist aims, backing of terrorist proxies such as the Lebanese group Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, and far-reaching support for radical Shiite militias in Iraq. As Iran seems to draw closer to acquiring nuclear weapons, almost every U.S. leader -- and would-be president -- has said that it simply won't be permitted to reach that goal.

Think another war can't happen? Think again. Unchastened by the Iraq fiasco, hawks in Vice President Cheney's office have been pushing the use of force. It isn't hard to foresee the range of military options that policymakers face.

9/19/07 - General Wesley Clark on Hardball with Chris Matthews

General Wesley Clark on Hardball with Chris Matthews

September 19, 2007
transcript by Reg NYC

Chris Matthews: Welcome back to Hardball. Well, the Democrats have found a way to shift war policy in Iraq. Their strategy is an amendment by Democratic Senator Jim Webb that would require troops returning from combat in Iraq to get the same amount of rest time at home before they're redeployed to the battlefield. The Senate's debating the bill right now, but the Bush administration says the measure is unconstitutional and would amount to a backdoor troops withdrawal. Would the Webb Amendment protect our troops or cause even greater harm to them on the ground in Iraq and should the bill be passed? General Wesley Clark is the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander. He's also author of a great new book, A Time To Lead. And Pete Hegseth is a Iraq war veteran and Executive Director of Vets For Freedom. General Clark, make the case for the Webb Amendment.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: The case is very simple. We have for over four years kept our troops deployed or redeploying back and forth to Iraq and Afghanistan. The number of troops is finite. They're limited. These are the same troops that have been there two, sometimes three times previously. The families are getting tired. They need recovery time if we're going to sustain this into the future. I think the Webb Amendment is a prudent way of getting that recovery time. It's no more than what the Army committed to several years ago in saying that the troops would have at least a year at home after they'd been gone for a year, and we found we were unable to do it. So, this is Congress' responsibility. It's responsible for raising and maintaining an army. It's in the Constitution, and Congress is asserting its authority. I think it's time to do it.