Which quote only proves you were lying when you claim the State Department told Clark not to meet with Mladic.
So now you need a cite that Mladic was a suspected war criminal?
Read the UN indictment. And stop wasting my time.
Regards,
Shodan
Variations on a theme by Shodan:
*post hoc ergo propter hoc *
Hmmmm. Wes supports the flag-burning amendent.
So does Gephardt, Bush, and :eek: Kucinich :eek:
My own views are reflected by Kerry, who I think I’m supporting since Lieberman might well be gone before my state gets to vote:
“As I’ve said before, if I saw someone burning the flag, I’d punch them in the mouth because I love the flag, but the constutition that I fought for preserves the right of free expression.”
Right on.
Anyway, yes, Clark was speaking to a group of vets, and most pols pro and con just wish the whole thing would go away, and even though Bush is for it he hasn’t pressed it either, but Clark supporters, does this jibe with what you want?
Shodan, all I require is for you to stop lying. Aren’t you the least bit ashamed about it? Let’s review. You claimed:
And in reality:
Oh sure, it doesn’t have quite the same ring as your version. But it least it has the distinct merit of being honest.
minty, you might want to consider calming down a bit. For whatever reason, you’ve chosen not to post the source of your “honest” Clark apologetics, but it is unconvincing (in addition to appearing to contradict the NYT).
While it may (or may not) be true that “every senior political and military for the Serbian side of the conflict was suspected of direct involvement or complicity in war crimes”, there’s war criminals and there’s war criminals, and Mladic is among the most notorious. If the State department’s directive about meeting with suspected war criminals did not apply to Mladic, it’s hard to imagine who it might have applied to. Just what is the “non-literal” reading of the State Department directive supposed to mean?
Other than that, you may have Shodan on a couple of hyper-technicalities. (Congratulations ;)). But substantively, nothing. (With one possible exception - I don’t know whether Clark’s career stalled after this incident).
In case there was any confusion, that was not a quote from some other source. It was my own work, based on any number of easily-verifiable sources of information. If you want a specific reference on Clark’s post-Mladic career, just take a look at this timeline from his campaign site. His continued career progression is exactly as I described it above.
And since Shodan dodged the question, I’ll ask you: If Clark really disobeyed a “State Department directive” not to meet with Mladic or other suspected war criminals, how come he wasn’t reprimanded, busted down to second lieutenant, forced to retire, etc.?
minty,
If that was your own words I’d like to see some substantiation for your assertion that Clark was only warned in general terms to not meet suspected war criminals. To repeat Shodan’s NYT quote
Back up your words. (Not that I would agree with your point anyway, as above. Still, there is a difference.)
It is also worth noting that your original assertion went like this:
You then backed off to include left-wing bloggers as well, and when confronted with the NYT you turned around and demanded a State Department memo (or public statement). This looks like some big-time weaseling to me, although if I subjected you to the same treatment to which you’ve subjected Shodan I would call it a lie. Or maybe even a “lie, lie, lie, lie, lie”.
Clark was never employed by the State Department. There is frequently infighting between the various branches of government. I’m not sure that the consequences of a senior military guy disobeying State Department directives are necessarily as severe as you would suggest.
As for Clark’s career, I am not suggesting that he might not have had those posts. It’s just that I am not that familiar with the military and the natural career progression, and am not sure how to interpret a guy getting this or that post as to compared to whatever other posts are available. Certainly you are right that it doesn’t seem like his career was stalled, hence my qualifier above, but I don’t know anything about this area.
IzzyR - thank you.
minty - I have no idea what crawled up your ass, but get it out.
You post a block of text, without attribution, perhaps trying to imply that you cut and pasted it from a reliable source. When IzzyR calls you on it, you admit to having made the whole thing up. The screams are still echoing from when december pulled something similar.
And your post admits that practically every one of my points is accurate.
As IzzyR points out, you challenged me to find a “single source” that wasn’t a right-wing blog. I came up with several, and you kept changing your mind.
But you continue to accuse me of lying.
Whatever. I leave it to those who read the thread to decide who is the more accurate - the New York Times, the Washington Post, the U.N., and MS/NBC - or you.
Regards,
Shodan
Not my assertion. It was Shodan who, after I repeatedly challenged him to prove his claims about the supposed State Department warning not to meet with Mladic, offered this as his bottom line: “The Washington Post reported State Department officials telling Clark not to meet with suspected war criminals (October 26, 1994, and again the next day)…”
Personally, I would bet that even that unattributed, unsourced, second-hand report is misleading and/or flat-out wrong. But as the source of Novak’s/WND’s/Shodan’s claim, it clearly doesn’t support it.
Yes, I demanded “a source on the record.” None has been provided, even now.
Only if you ignore that my very first statement on teh matter asked for “a source on the record,” rather than just another repetition of the same sourceless assertion being circulated by the right-wing punditry and blogosphere.
Which also suggests that the supposed “State Department directive” was a hell of a lot less of a “directive” than Shodan’s claim depends upon. A couple of State Department staffers saying to Clark that he should avoid bad guys would be a long, long way from Shodan’s claim.
So why did you ignore the NYT which said otherwise. Apparently because it allowed you to put forth your mythical non-literal interpretation of the State Department directive so as to not include meetings with Mladic. How is that more “honest”?
Well the NYT & WP can be wrong. But they are certainly reputable sources, and you don’t get to dismiss them out of hand. Sorry.
“Source on record” is a rather vague term. In the context of both the language of your post and the nature of what might be reasonably expected, it appeared to me that it meant something reputable, as opposed to “Novack’s assertion and the brain-dead conservative blogosphere”.
I don’t think it is reasonable to expect an official State Department memo to Clark, or an official pronouncement by the State Department. I recall all sorts of media reports of infighting between various government branches (this Chalabi guy in Iraq springs to mind as a recent example) but this is not officially supposed to be public knowledge, and the government agencies involved did not release internal memos on the subject or issue official statements about it. This does not allow you to ridicule all such stories and dismiss media reports on the subject.
If indeed your original intention was for some official document or pronouncement, your request was unreasonable and misleading.
I don’t think it suggests anything of the sort. All it suggests is that Clark was not directly answerable to the State Department and could not be held directly accountable. The State Department would generally be thought of as taking the lead role in the area of negotiating with foreign leaders. But as for the consequences (to a military officer) of disobeying them - this would depend on what the position of more senior military and civilian leaders was. As a result, I would imagine that the potential consequences could vary greatly. So it would be a mistake to make any inferences from whatever level of punishment he did receive.
I haven’t merely accused you of lying, Shodan. I have demonstrated your falsehoods, in five numbered items. The supposed “State Department directive” is not among those five numbered items, for the simple reason that the evidence on that point is poor to non-existent. This contrasts with the five numbered items, on which the evidence conclusively demonstrates the falsity of your claims. Feel free to address those lies whenever you want. Or keep up with the diversions. Your call.
Getting back to the “character issue”, I’ll just note that we haven’t had a President with much moral character since Jimmy Carter, who wasn’t exactly the best President in the world.
On Reagan, we’ve got everything from Iran-Contra to calling ketchup a vegetable in order to skimp on the school-lunch program. Bush I was willing to toss out everything he stood for to be Reagan’s veep, and later was up to his neck in Iran-Contra. Clinton…well, aside from the sex thing, which I’m not gonna worry much about, there was just nothing in particular that Clinton stood for enough to say, “This is what I’m for, and this is where I draw the line.” And Bush Lite has been willing to lie like crazy in order to invade a sovereign country and overthrow Saddam, without knowing how he was going to install a new government there.
I did not ignore it. I asked what was the Times’ source for the statement (which is unattributed and apparently not supported by any contemporaneous reports), then pointed out that “It’s not like the mainstream press hasn’t uncritically repeated the lies of the Republican press on more than one occasion, you know.” I discounted the Times story; I did not ignore it.
I did not “dismiss them out of hand.” As discussed above, I discounted the 10/15/03 Times story because there was no source for its assertion and because there is apparently no contemporaneous (i.e., 1994) authority for the proposition that the State Department Clark was told not to meet with Mladic.
As for the Washington Post, how the can I “dismiss them out of hand” when all I have to go on is Shodan’s assertion that “The Washington Post reported State Department officials telling Clark not to meet with suspected war criminals (October 26, 1994, and again the next day).” The stories ain’t on the table, Izzy. Heck, he didn’t even bother to quote the stories. But for the sake of argument, I assumed that his statement accurately represented what the WP had reported. And you know what? It didn’t support his claims that "The State Department warned Clark not to go to Mladic’s headquarters . . . "
Good. So do you consider it reasonable to claim that the State Department directed Clark not to meet with Mladic, given that no such memo or official pronouncement exists. Come on, Izzy, the claim isn’t even backed up by an anonymous source. It’s just an assertion hanging out there in thin air.
minty,
The NYT is generally considered a reliable source, and they generally don’t just go about saying “such-and-such happened” based on “Novack’s assertion and the brain-dead conservative blogosphere”. If the Times said such-and-such happened it is reasonable to assume that it did in fact happen, even if they don’t accompany the statement with “we’ve seen an internal State Department memo which told us this”. Not every fact reported in the media is accompanied by a description of the source, but every fact (in the reputable media) is assumed to have one. (I would assume that the press tends to announce the source of their data if they are reporting on a story that they themselves are in the process of breaking, as opposed to cases such as this one in which they are reporting stories that have previously been reported elsewhere or are widely known. But no matter.)
Not that it is impossible for the Times to be wrong. Any source can be wrong. But they certainly meet the criteria for reliable cites, and if they (& the Post) reported on some fact the baseline assumption has to be that it is true, and the guy that wants to deny it has to make a case for it. Not to dismiss them as not having a source, or whatever. (In particular, your claim that they were duped by the “the Republican press” puts you well into Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy territory).
Frankly I’m finding it hard to believe that you yourself, when reading a story in the NYT about some political matter, automatically dismiss any reported fact that is not attributed to some “source”.
As for the lack of “contemporaneous (i.e., 1994) authority”, it could be for all we know that there was all sorts of “contemporaneous authority”, but that it doesn’t happen to be available on the internet. So you can’t bolster Shodan’s case with such evidence, but you can’t call the lack of such evidence as evidence of absence.
FWIW, here’s a bit more from the NYT about the episode:
This seems markedly different than your “honest” portrayal of the incident.
Let’s just step back for a moment from the debate about how many angels can dance on the head of this smear.
Clark met with a suspected war criminal. Big whoop. What is this supposed to prove?
Hell, Roosevelt met with Stalin. Washington met with Benedict Arnold. Donald Rumsfeld met with Saddam Hussein. Meetings happen, even with unsavory characters.
The State Department didn’t like it? Eh. As Izzy pointed out, Clark didn’t take orders from State.
As I said earlier, the whole thing is a pathetic attempt to poison the well, and should be disregarded by any voter with a brain.
Liar.
It’s four. You are lying thru your teeth.
Nowhere did I state that he was indicted in any other year. Liar.
You claimed there was, or should be, a State Department directive, not me.
Right here.
Liar.
Nowhere did I state that it happened in any other year. In fact, I linked to the UN indictment listing the other crimes Mladic is suspected of being involved in. Liar.
I never stated or implied anything about the role Clark intended to fill in his meeting with Mladic. Liar.
You haven’t disproven a fucking thing. All you are doing is backpedalling every time I produce a cite.
And lying.
Minty,
I find it disturbing that you jump directly to accusations of lying without passing through "Pardon me, but I think you're mistaken in your facts.". As near as I can tell from this thread, Shodan may have been off in some of his details, but nothing indicates that he was either deliberately telling falsehoods or that his claims were substantially incorrect.
I'd think someone in your profession would be able to make the not-very-fine distinction between the deliberate telling of a mistruth and an recounting (apparently) based on memory that was substantially correct but wrong in some details.
Anyway, you’ve lost a lot of my respect in this thread.
No, you just haven’t been paying attention. Allow me to direct you to the relevant language: “5. Clark’s career did not “stall” after the 1994 meeting with Mladic. He served as Director for Strategic Plans and Policy of the Joint Chiefs until 1996. Then he was tapped as commander of the U.S. Southern Command until July 1997, whereupon he became commander-in-chief of NATO.”
Wrong. Your claim, verbatim: “The State Department warned Clark not to go to Mladic’s headquarters, since Mladic is an indicted war criminal.” Seeing as how Mladic was not an indicted war criminal at the time, you lie when you claim that was the reason Clark was warned not to meet with him.
“State Department directrive” was Izzy’s language, in support of your claims.
Wrong again, my fabricating friend. Once again, your own statement verbatim: “Clark’s career stalled when he met with Ratko Mladic, who masterminded the massacre of Muslim civilians at Srebernica.” Mladic had not masterminded the Srebrenica massacre at the time Clark met him. Your omission of that fact, in the context of smearing Clark for the meeting, is completely dishonest.
You only linked to the UN indictment after I did in pointing out your falsehood about Srebrenica. Again, you show complete dishonesty in pursuit of smearing a Democrat.
That’s why I labeled it a “Lie by omission.” Clark did not just “go to Mladic’s headquarters.” He went there on a diplomatic trip intended to promote a peaceful solution to the Bosnian war. As part of the diplomatic trip, he met the head of the Serbian armed forces in Bosnia. B.F.D.
If he were merely mistaken in his facts, I would probably agree with you. But Shodan’s smear spun the story so maliciously, and so obviously falsely, that I believe intent is a better explanation that than ignorance. And the guy still hasn’t retracted any of his falsehoods. That spells malice to me, I’m afraid.
“Some of his details”?!? You think the stuff I’ve been calling him on is “details”? Good god, Shodan has tortured the facts so far beyond reality that they’re almost unrecognizable. Wesley Clark disobeyed orders so he could meet with his good buddy the Serbian war criminal! Feh.
I’ll get over it, I’m sure.