Clark: U.S. Needs New Plan in Terror War

I voted for him in the democratic primaries in 2004. I think this guy is closer to representing what America should have a in polical leader.

I like Clark. He was my fav candidate in 2004, he knows more about war than any other candidate. How about we put a real war president in office? A Former U.S. 4star general? I think it'd be a good idea. He probably would make better decisions than a texan.

ClarkCast: A Political Beacon

Wesley Clark is who I would've voted for in the election, had he won the primaries and had I been of legal voting age :)

From the article:

...Clark joined House and Senate Democrats on Wednesday in calling for a strategy that would provide U.S. agents with the resources to pursue bin Laden...

It seems to me that United States forces (of one type or another) should be able to find bin Laden, and that the reason they haven't must be that they don't have enough resources. I realize that the terrain is difficult and that the culture is also difficult. Can these difficulties be overcome through the application of sufficient resources, or are they actually insurmountable? Any thoughts?

Brad Ferris:

I think the billions we are spending on the war in Iraq for no solid, real reason would have been more than enough to track down and eliminate all of Al Queda. Especially if we had made it a joint venture with the other free countries of the world that AQ has terrorized (instead of taking it on ourselves to invade other countries and weaken that united nations / NATO bond).

It seems that Gen Clark would have been able to accomplish this and strengthen our ties with our first world allies, since he was a NATO commander. We could have possibly eliminated the real threat while not sacrificing our rights and privacy, weaking our bonds with allies, and costing thousands of American lives.

gnoleb:

That's about what I'm thinking, too. The amount of money and other resources that we have poured into the invasion of Iraq surely could have been very useful to U.S. agents who were actually pursuing bin Laden, not only for the purpose of finding him, but also for use in finding and defeating his followers.

Clark's getting a lot of attention in the past few weeks. I produce his podcast for securingamerica.com, and he's managed to find the top spot in the political podcasts section in iTunes. I was a tech staffer in his campaign in '04, and I can tell your personally, this guy is the real deal. When you meet him, you quickly realize he's the most presidential person you've every met who hasn't been elected president.

This is all very funny!

1. You would have thought that we would have found Hitler after the defeat of Germany but we didn't! Where is all of the complaints about that? Osama new darn well what he was getting into and I am sure he planned even harder when it came to going into hiding! And by the way, President Clinton was offered Osama on a silver platter by Syria after we had determined that he was behind the first attempt to bring down the towers and failed (but did succeed in killing Americans) and Clinton did not think we had the legal justification upon which to take him! WOW, was he not on the FBI's most wanted list? Oh, but he did plead with the Saudi's (who kicked him out of their country to begin with and gave him 100's of millions to leave them alone) to take him!

I think you all are missing the point! there are a lot more terrorists out there than Osama that we are currently in a war against and if we could get behind this effort hole heartedly and yes, find and correct the errors that have been made along the way instead of one side hole heartedly focusing on how terrible our current President is and on bringing him down we would probably accomplish what needs to be accomplished!

2. North Korea! Really! I thought President Carter and President Clinton solved this in '94 when they provided North Korea with Nuclear power plants to move water in exchange for their promise to halt research into Nuclear Weapons! Well it turns out that we probably aided in their development of such missiles by providing them with North Technology! That was brilliant!

3. Iran, One question, Is Clark suggesting a War with Iran? I mean we already have the world community demanding they stop their program and the UN Security Council demanding the very same thing, but common we all know that none of that will have any effect on this! That you could be certain of! So I am all ears and waiting to hear about this new approach to the War on Terror from Mr. Clark when it comes to the Iran situation!

And this statement is the best: "Let's face it: We're not going to win the war on terror unless we start making more friends and fewer enemies in the world"

Is Mr. Clark suggesting that we can make friends with the Taliban, Al Qaeda, & the radical Islamic Fundamentalists that hate us? They were attacking us all throughout the '90s, why was that? When we had the entire world in love with us under the Clinton Administration! And now because we brought freedom and what we hope will be a successful Democratic form of Government to Millions in the region where Torture and death by their Leaders were the norm and where Women were treated worse than animals! I guess the thinking is that we would make a lot more friends in the world if we fought to bring more of that to the world!

On the Hurricane comment (I guess he just couldn't help himself) The President prepared and tried to get the signature from the Governor of Louisiana on the required legal documents for a declaration of a state of emergency 2 days prior to this horrible event (which is required for Federal Assistance in our system and has always been the way it is done because of states rights) and the Governor refused to sign a declaration stating that they had it under control! The President also asked the Mayor of New Orleans to issue a mandatory evacuation 2 days prior and he refused to do so only issuing a recommended evacuation the day before! It seams to me that if the Presidents recommendations were enacted (Which I am sure they would have provided the assistance needed to evacuate if the Governor had declared a state of emergency) a lot of horrible things that occurred would not have!

With that said, when the tragedy did occur The Administration did not act fast enough but we do know that their State and Local Government is the ones that acted incompetently here and if they were Republicans I would be calling for their resignations due to the fact that State and Local Governments are who we have expected to respond to these events throughout our history with the Federal Government providing mostly logistical and monetary assistance at the request of the States! In this case we had the refusal of assistance by the State Government!

Oh, on a slightly different note I heard the Democrats are promising to get rid of the Taliban! LOL, WOW and this is what some call a party that is in tune with what is going on in the world!

Brian

Brian, catch up, man. Even the Republican party bosses have abandoned most of those tired old talking points. Bin Laden handed to Clinton on a silver platter by Syria? Puh-leeze. That's where I stopped reading your comment seriously. No, wait, it was when you pointed out that the allies couldn't find Adolph Hitler until after he had killed himself. Yeah, that's when it was. Everything you said aside from those two things might be right on, but when you start out making ridiculous assertions, you lose your credibility right from the start.

President Clinton said that himself in a speech he gave! I will get you a link to the speech so that you can here it for yourself!

Brian

Before you link newsmax.com's original article which began this rightwing myth, here's a fairly clear explanation regarding the ridiculous implication that Bill Clinton had control over bin Laden and that he "refused to take him." From the linked article:

The truth is that Clinton never offered Osama bin Laden to Saudi Arabia. Hannity distorted a remark Clinton made in a speech to the Long Island Association's annual luncheon on February 15, 2002, in which Clinton said that he "pleaded with the Saudis" to accept Sudan's offer to hand bin Laden to Saudi Arabia. Sudan never offered bin Laden to the United States. Hannity's mention of "the tape" is a reference to a video of this speech. NewsMax.com obtained a video of the speech in 2002 and began hyping the supposed Clinton "admission" (see http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/4/20/112336.shtml">transcript and listen to the http://www.newsmax.com/clinton2.mp3">audio). In fact, Clinton did not "admit" to the Sudan offer in that speech or anywhere else. Here's the relevant portion of Clinton's remarks to the Long Island Association:

CLINTON: So we tried to be quite aggressive with them [Al Qaeda]. We got -- well, Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, then he went to Sudan. And we'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again. They released him. At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America. So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan.

Furthermore, during his June 20 interview on 60 Minutes with CBS anchor Dan Rather, Clinton categorically denied that such an offer was made: "'There was a story which is factually inaccurate that the Sudanese offered bin Laden to us,' says Mr. Clinton. 'As far as I know, there is not a shred of evidence of that.'"

So why did he say "At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America" this was the speach that I was referring to! We did know or strongly suspected that he was involved in the '93 WTC attacks at the time! we should have if possible taken him out then!

May'be he did not mean he had the ability to bring him here when he actually infered that he did! But, I still do not think that treating him as a wanted criminal was the right thing to do! We should'nt be thinking of our enemies like criminals who we have to bring to trial! I do not think they would give us that curtesy!

thanks for finding that for clarification!

Brian

Brian, I agree with part of what you've said. It certainly would have been nice to have somehow had control of Bin Laden and to have had him in jail before September 11, 2001. Maybe if we had paid attention to the American intelligence community when they produced the PDB titled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In U.S," for example. I don't agree with your contention that Bill Clinton has "admitted" that we could have apprehended Bin Laden but didn't. You may draw that conclusion from reading that transcript, but I certainly don't. Not many other people have, either, aside from possibly Fox "news," and maybe LGF and Powerline.

I also don't see how your assertion that "we shouldn't be thinking of our enemies like criminals" has any relevance to the situation in 1996. Best I can tell, when you refer to "our enemies" you are probably referring to the so-called "War on Terror," but I would remind you that, aside from "wars" on poverty, illiteracy, and drugs, the United States has never attempted to prosecute a war against an idea, much less against a specific criminal tactic before President Bush's ill-advised usurpation of the term "war" in order to deprive Americans of some of civil liberties. President Clinton had wisely not begun the practice of flaunting domestic and international law in the name of a "war" in which an "enemy" can never be defeated, and can never surrender.

Brian Ralls said ...

We should'nt be thinking of our enemies like criminals who we have to bring to trial! I do not think they would give us that curtesy!

There are several trials of our enemies going on right now. This meme of "we can't treat our enemies as criminals" is flat wrong, and has been rejected de facto even by the right. Otherwise, we'd have simply capped Hussein and all the other captured Iraqi leaders rather than hold them. Many of them are war criminals and should be treated and tried as such under the conventions we were instrumental in creating.

I'm sure you're tired of the phrase, as your side of the political fence has beaten it into the ground. But, "the terrorists win" when we're driven to question the propriety and value of our own core principles. In some sense, they've already won, as they drove this administration to act on an internally-held doctrine of pre-emptive war. Of course, "pre-emptive" is generous, as it assumes they honestly believed the rationale they gave us for going into Iraq. In any event, the notion of invading a sovereign country for what we think they're capable of doing (despite all the evidence to the contrary) is, in my view, un-American.

I can fairly hear your response coming: "9/11 changed everything." Indeed. In the following weeks and months, we were closer to the world community than at any time in my memory. But the real change arose from our reaction to 9/11, rather than the event itself. We're now almost entirely without international support - the very balance and networking that would be necessary to even approach winning a "war on terror." We're also hundreds of billions of dollars into the effort - money that very few ever thought of spending to help improve the living circumstances of our most needy citizens. That money would be so much better utilized here.

Short of that? Very little has changed. Our ports are still largely insecure. Our airports are no better. Major power facilities, mass transit - the unfunded security list is far too long. Homeland security has been given short financial shrift and abhorrently managed.

I won't speak for General Clark, as he does quite well himself. But, national security really does mean security at home. A senseless war in Iraq, that on any given day borders on civil war, has drained the resources necessary to provide actual heightened national security.

We need to find a different course.

LostAirman said

In any event, the notion of invading a sovereign country for what we think they're capable of doing (despite all the evidence to the contrary) is, in my view, un-American.

That is even funnier! The Clinton Admin declared this threat posed by Iraq, every major country with intelligence capabilities came to the same conclusions that we did about WMD, and the UN Inspector repeatedly stated that it was not a matter of us having to prove he had WMD rather a matter of Saddam having to prove that he dismantled the WMDs that he acknowledged having.

What is even funnier is that with all of this alleged evidence that existed that Iraq did not have WMDs, no one in the Democratic party was saying he did not have WMDs prior to the War using that so called evidence! In fact the majority voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq! and if you listened to them then they were saying the evidence of Iraqs WMDs was irrefutable! not all but most!

Another funny point you all ignore is the the Intelligence report used (in part!) to justify the War only stated with confidence that Iraq had the materials needed for WMDs and the capability to re-institute production of WMDs such as Nerve gases and mustard gas.

The funny thing here is that we did recover over a ton of nerve gases in Iraq which would be enough to kill 100's of thousands of people! but this according to the UN and most opponents of the war can not be considered WMDs because it was not in war heads!

Now an interesting question here would be, did we actually think Saddam would be passing off Warheads filled with nerve agents to Ossama to somehow launch at us from some nearby country or smuggle in the US and launch them from within the US at US targets? I seriously doubt that would be their method of choice!

No, the most likely method would be what they come up with in this years season of 24! where they put together containers to release it in highly populated and vented areas capable of spreading the agent!

But I have a better question, do you actually believe that we can build a fool proof system capable of preventing any terrorist attack? if you believe that, you are helplessly Naive!

And for those who do not think that our current course has had no positive impact, you are seriously mistaken! We had another Crazy Dictator named Kudafi who like Saddam claimed he had no WMDs and was not trying to develop nukes who on the day that we captured Saddam all of a sudden turned over to us what he supposedly did not have! WMDs and all of the materials he had obtained in his efforts to develop nukes.

And what do the Dems say about this? The best that they can come up with is that was the result of the Clinton Admins negotiations with him 5 or 6 years earlier! WOW, you guys can take credit for literally anything you want to! Just say that is so and it is so!