Make this another “right on” for Sofa King!
Sam
So the guy believed the POTUS and Powell, Rumsfeld et al when they said we have evidence of WMD, we know he has them because we have seen the evidence.
What a jerk!
Why did he ever believe Bush in the first place 
Hmm vote for a weaseling Dem or a war mongering lying bastard Rep.
What a choice.
I don’t have much of a dog in this fight, as my opinion about Clark is pretty ambiguous.
I did hear on the radio though a quote from him saying that nothing in these past statements being reported is incompatible with his current stance, or words to that effect. If I have it wrong, I’m sure I’ll be corrected.
This registered as a big “Huh?” with me.
A 180, I can understand. I don’t see how his past and current stances don’t directly contradict each other.
I’m sorry. I should have added above that I am a volunteer for Clark’s campaign, though I haven’t actually done anything.
Scylla, I think that the apparent contradiction in Clark’s stance can be easily explained by a few simple posits.
Few people disagreed that Saddam Hussein was a terrible despot who represented a potential threat to the region. That’s been the official position of the US for at least two years before Bush got in office.
Few people disagreed that Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons. The fact that he used those weapons against Iranian soldiers is beyond dispute. The fact that someone in the region used chemical weapons against the Kurds is also well established.
But the “fact” that Hussein had chemical and biological weapons in 2002, and was planning to use them was a chimera put forth by careful manipulation of American intelligence agencies. We were all told that was what the facts were. What we didn’t know then and strongly suspect now is that those “facts” were distilled into methanol and sold to us as moonshine, in the hopes that while blinded we wouldn’t see what was really going on.
And it worked on many people. But coming forth now and saying “I think that was a bunch of bullshit” is not a contradiction.
People are taking the war issue and completely polarizing it. Either you were and still are for the war or you weren’t and still aren’t for the war.
What I’m getting from reading quite a bit on Clark’s positions on the war, since the opinion of a real military general with combat experience seemed like a better idea than listening to Rumsfield spout off contradictions on CNN, is a few things.
Clark believes that there is a significant thread against the United States from fundamentalist Islamic regimes. They have de declared such intent so its not a foregone conclusion either. Al Qaeda thusfar has launched the only successful one against the United States. Thus, he believes they should be the first target of any action, military or otherwise. He says that repeatedly.
But, he also believes that Al Qaeda isn’t the only threat against the United States. Regimes, such as Saddam Hussein’s, would also offer a threat on the stability of the Middle East region, which the United States in extricably linked to, for both political and economic reasons. He says if Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons, he would not put it past him to use them and cause some major problems for us. Therefore, they must also be dealt with. If going through the UN doesn’t work (for example, if inspections had continued to be denied), then strategical military campaigns must be used.
So far, yep, it sounds a lot like President Bush’s whole general strategy too. This is where his statements about having supported a war come from. But, and this is the big but, he does not believe that the war was justified at the time it was. He believes that the threat wasn’t properly assessed. All avenues through the UN weren’t used, there wasn’t proper intelligence to verify a major threat, and we were already fighting a major front against Al Qaeda. It was not the right time for an Iraq war and it was not justified.
His position can be summed up as, “If we really had studied the situation and military action was positively identified as necessary, I would have supported it, but in this case, it was not the proper time, nor did it have the proper justification. We should be focusing on a known threat, Al Qaeda.”
This puts him square in the middle of the political field. Whether the far left likes it or not, the world we live in requires military action sometimes. Whoevers fault it is, even if we instigated it a decade ago, there are forces that are against us and want to see us go down. We must strategically decide how to pursue our national security. By haphazardly pursuing wars against anyone who could one day pose a thread without sufficiently analyzing that threat, all we accomplish is greater long term instability and more vitriol from the international community, something we do not need right now.
Stop painting the war in a polarized way and you’ll find Wesley Clark is the perfect guy for the job. Not a crazy war monger, but not a crazy peacenik that would put the country in danger either.