General Wesley Clark on C-SPAN's Washington Journal

November 30, 2006
Transcript by RegNYC

Pedro Echavarria: General Clark, your thoughts on the Iraq Studies Group recommendation for pullback?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think they're pretty common sense. I think its- there's no other way to proceed other than to have a regional diplomatic dialog, and, and I agree there should be a fixed timeline in front of the dialog. So, what I'm hearing about the Iraq Study Group I like. I've got to see the report. I haven't read the whole report, but I think this is a common sense way to proceed if the Bush administration will take it.

Pedro Echavarria: What are the benefits of a fixed time-back, and what are the liabilities?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, the benefits are that I guess you have clearly indicated your pressure on Maliki, that you're not going to stay there, and you've- it has political ramifications in the United States. So, it looks like a simple, clear-cut answer to the American people to the problem of casualties in Iraq. The, the drawbacks of the fixed timeline are that you might need that flexibility when you're doing the diplomatic discussions as to where your troops go, how many are there, when do they leave and so forth. It'd be a lot better to have the timeline come out of the dialog so that you've got- When you go into this regional dialog, you need a bag of carrots and sticks, and part of that bag of options is what you do with your troops. And so, I wouldn't want to see us get pinned down in advance of the diplomatic discussions. I think there have to be some events, an event-based scenario that we're working on in the region. There should be some notional timelines to it, but, and it's fine to draw those out internally, but to release those and commit to those before we've done the diplomatic discussions in the region, I don't think, I think it puts the, the, the cart before the horse.

General Wesley Clark on The Al Franken Show
May 1, 2006
transcript by Reg NYC

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Transcript below ...

Reprinted with permission.

By Gen. (ret.) Wesley Clark
New York Times
December 6, 2005

Doha, Qatar

While the Bush administration and its critics escalated the debate last week over how long our troops should stay in Iraq, I was able to see the issue through the eyes of America's friends in the Persian Gulf region. The Arab states agree on one thing: Iran is emerging as the big winner of the American invasion, and both President Bush's new strategy and the Democratic responses to it dangerously miss the point. It's a devastating critique. And, unfortunately, it is correct.

While American troops have been fighting, and dying, against the Sunni rebels and foreign jihadists, the Shiite clerics in Iraq have achieved fundamental political goals: capturing oil revenues, strengthening the role of Islam in the state, and building up formidable militias that will defend their gains and advance their causes as the Americans draw down and leave. Iraq's neighbors, then, see it evolving into a Shiite-dominated, Iranian buffer state that will strengthen Tehran's power in the Persian Gulf just as it is seeks nuclear weapons and intensifies its rhetoric against Israel.

Reprinted with permission.

By Gen. (ret.) Wesley Clark
Washington Post
Unabridged Version
August 26, 2005

In the old, familiar fashion, mounting US casualties in Iraq have mobilized increasing public doubts about the war. Now, more than half the American people believe that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. They're right. But it would also be a mistake now to pull out, start pulling out, or set a date to pull out. Instead we need a strategy to create a stable democratizing and peaceful state in Iraq – a strategy the Administration has failed to develop and articulate.

From the outset of the American post-invasion efforts, we needed a three-pronged strategy – diplomatic, political, and military. Iraq sits geographically on the fault-line between Shia and Sunni Islam – and for the mission to succeed we will have to be the catalyst for regional cooperation. Iraq cannot be "isolated from its neighbors and tensions in the region. We needed to engage Iraq's neighbors to insure that a stable, democratizing Iraq was not a threat to them, to isolate Iraq from outside supplies, leadership, and manpower, and to gain from them resources and support to alleviate the burdens on the US.