General Wesley Clark on Countdown with Keith Olbermann

July 12, 2007
transcript by Melange

Keith Olbermann:  It’s an honor to be joined once again by Retired 4-star Army General Wesley Clark, also of course former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and a former Democratic presidential candidate as well.  General Clark, thanks again for being with us tonight. 

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK:  Good to be with you Keith.

Keith Olbermann:  The title alone of that new intelligence report, 'al Qaeda Better Positioned to Strike the West,' uh, obviously the phraseology reminds anyone who hears it of 2001's report 'bin Laden Determined to Strike US' followed by another report tonight by the AP about al Qaeda efforts to get operatives here, how serious that is is hard to say.  But how could a president play the fear card for so long and then simply dismiss what was reported today?  How could he have it both ways?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK:  Keith, he can’t.  I mean, the truth is al Qaeda has not only reconstituted its base area, this time along the border in Pakistan, next to Afghanistan, but it's also used our mission in Iraq as a huge recruiting magnet.  It ... every time we're seen on television, we generate anger among the Islamic populations and we feed the al Qaeda recruiting machine.  It's ... it's the inevitable accompaniment of the war strategy that President Bush chose.

General Wesley Clark on Countdown with Keith Olbermann

July 11, 2007
transcript by Melange

Amy Robach: Turning now to the upcoming NIE, the National Intelligence Estimate. Newsweek today reporting that it will include al Qaeda has “reconstituted its core structure and become stronger.” The Associated Press today also quoting unnamed intelligence sources saying al Qaeda’s resurrection has been so successful that America’s number one threat is now operating at a level last seen six years ago in the summer of 2001, just prior to the attacks of September 11th. This coming as a top CIA official testified before Congress today that al Qaeda is not, as Mr. Bush has claimed, on the run but has settled back in on the Pakistan border with more money, training and communications. All of this in the 24 hours after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff sparked a wave of ridicule when he explained to the Chicago Tribune how he has analyzed past al Qaeda patterns and recent al Qaeda communications.

[Video clip]

Michael Chertoff: All these things give me a…kind of a gut feeling that we’re in a period of…not that I have a specific threat, you know…that, uh I have in mind right now, but that we are entering a period of increased vulnerability.

[end Video clip]

Amy Robach: Meanwhile Newsweek reports that other US officials are offering concrete reasons for al Qaeda’s resurgence, specifically a truce that Pakistan struck with extremists on the border, allowing them to operate unfettered and give al Qaeda what the CIA official described as a safe haven. We turn now to retired 4-star General Wesley Clark, MSNBC Analyst and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, as well as a one-time Democratic presidential candidate. General, thanks for your time tonight.

General Wesley Clark on Fox News

May 30, 2006
Transcript by Reg NYC

Martha MacCallum: And North of the border, Canada's intelligence service is warning, warning that the risk of home grown terrorism is growing in their estimation.

The spy agency in Canada says that dangers from outside their border are now as prevalent as the risks that exist right inside their own country from their own citizens in many cases, and that is not very comforting here in the US where we share a very long border with our neighbors to the North.

For more on this, I'm joined by Fox News analyst General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. General, good to to have you with us today.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you, Martha. Good to be with you.

Martha MacCallum: Now, we've spent so much time focusing on the border to the South and Mexico and being concerned, rightly so, about what should be done about the infiltration on folks illegally coming across that border. How concerned do you think we should be, and what do you think of Canada's intelligence assessment?

Reprinted with permission.

By Wesley Clark
USA Today
July 11, 2005

As the follow-up reports emerge from the strikes on the London transit system, it's not too early to begin drawing the implications for our own security efforts.

In the first place, whatever the merits of the war in Iraq, it should be clear that we still face a threat at home. Already there have been concerns that some terrorists have left Iraq to return to Europe. Moreover, Islamic anger about the U.S. actions in Iraq, as well as the continuing conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, feeds terrorist recruiting worldwide.

But al-Qaeda has evolved since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001.

Relentless pressure by the CIA, Special Forces and many other national intelligence and police efforts has made the old, centralized structure of al-Qaeda unworkable.

And we need to keep up the pressure. But al-Qaeda's new threat is decentralized. Thursday's attacks in London have all the earmarks of such a "franchise" operation, locally planned and resourced with relatively modest means, emulating al-Qaeda without the vulnerabilities of centralized resourcing and direction.