Retired Gen. Clark endorses Clinton

[ggoose25]

Four-star general who had short-lived run in 2004 active in politics
The Associated Press
Updated: 10:50 a.m. CT Sept 15, 2007

NEW YORK - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton was endorsed Saturday by Wesley Clark, the retired four-star general whose early criticism of the Iraq war fueled a high-profile but short-lived run for the party's nomination in 2004.

"Senator Clinton has the experience, good judgment and the battle tested character to face the challenges ahead," Clark told The Associated Press.

Clark, who joined the Democratic field four years ago largely due to an active online draft movement, planned to discuss his endorsement on a conference call with bloggers later Saturday.

A decorated career Army officer who graduated first in his class at West Point, Clark served as NATO's supreme allied commander and led the Operation Allied Force in the Kosovo war under President Bill Clinton.

Clark received numerous military commendations throughout his 34-year career and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Clark's brief foray into presidential politics was not as successful.

He was a latecomer to the 2004 field. His military credentials and forceful criticism of President George W. Bush's handling of the Iraq war propelled him to the top of polls for a time. But he stumbled on his first full day as a candidate, saying he "probably" would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing the Iraq invasion. Questions about that statement dogged him for the rest of the campaign.

Clark left the race in February after finishing a weak third in New Hampshire and winning just one primary — Oklahoma's — after that. He endorsed the eventual Democratic nominee, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.

Clark has remained active in politics, running a political action committee, WESpac, and campaigning for Democratic candidates around the country.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20789469/

[Holt's Cat]

:jack

[ggoose25]

I hope whottt sees this

[xrayzebra]

This is news?

[ChumpDumper]

:lmao

The neocons have a new mantra.

[Wild Cobra]

Is it any surprise he endorses Hillary?

From a few links worth seeing:



BBC's profile of Clark's candidacy also claims that his "credentials for running against President George Bush in 2004 rest squarely on his military reputation." If so, that is great news, for Clark hardly has any.

There is little respect for Clark among his colleagues in the military. An investigative report by CounterPunch magazine in 1999 reveals a man of gargantuan vanity, arrogant to subordinates and subservient to superiors, obsessed with micro-management, and politically savvy at the expense of military expertise.

One officer who served with Clark termed him "The poster child for everything that is wrong with the [general officer] corps," and said that under Clark's command, the 1st [Armored] Cavalry Division at Fort Hood was "easily the worst division I have ever seen in 25 years of doing this stuff."

"Certainly the Waco onslaught bears characteristics typical of Gen. Wesley Clark: the eagerness to take out the leader (viz., the Clark-ordered bombing of Milosevich's private residence); the utter disregard for the lives of innocent men, women and children; the arrogant miscalculations about the effects of force; disregard for law, whether of the Posse Comitatus Act governing military actions within the United States or, abroad, the purview of the Nuremberg laws on war crimes and attacks on civilians." (CounterPunch)

Wesley Clark is a war criminal. He commanded the U.S. forces and the whole NATO mission in the Kosovo war, which from the allies' perspective, was a stunning bombing campaign. Toward the end of the comflict, he very nearly touched off a major global confrontation when he ordered NATO forces to attack an airfield where a Russian force had landed with the intention of injecting themselves on the side of the Serbs to halt the butchery. Had Clark's order been followed, it would have touched off the most dangerous <Russian-U.S>. military confrontation since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Clark is getting his poltical advice from Bill Clinton, his commander-in-chief when Wesley attacked Kosovo. That, alone, should be a major clue to Clark's politics. Though the U.S. suffered no casualties in the Kosovo "war", hundreds of civilians were killed, most of them in obvious circumstances (on strategic bridges and highway stretches, in the Chinese embassy and in office buildings that were being bombed). Worse, Clinton authorized Wes to "try out" depleted uranium in the Kosovo conflict - and so together they have left a 4,500,000,000-year-long legacy that will surely produce an epidemic of health effects on many Croats and Serbs and others for generations to come.

In those days, the Pentagon encouraged and assisted al-Qaeda to move its operatives into the Kosovo region to become part of the "Kosovo Liberation Army," a collection of ethnic cleanser-murderers, brigands and drug traffickers who were, then and now, important guarantors of the continued flow of Aghanistan's #1 cash crop - heroin - into the West.

It was Wesley Clark who touted the doggedness of those KLA "freedom fighters" - but then before September 2001, al-Qaeda operatives, despite the organization's suspected role in the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa, were still a source of useful CIA assets.
Wow... What an interesting Al-Qaeda connection, with the Clinton's and Clark!

The links:

Wesley Clark (http://www.zpub.com/un/clark.html)

Citizen Clark?
Or, Why Electing a Mass Murderer Is a Really Bad Idea (http://www.antiwar.com/malic/m091803.html)

An Open Letter to Michael Moore
You Are Way Off Base About Wesley Clark (http://www.counterpunch.org/lodge09172003.html)

[ChumpDumper]

So, this isn't news -- but it's worth spending the time to Google some neoconblogs to try to trash a guy who served his country.

Why do you guys hate our armed forces?

[Nbadan]

I'm disappointed in Clark, but given his past relationship with the Clintons, I'm not terribly surprised. Really I was hoping that Clark would jump into the race and join up with Obama...all those neocon talking points about Clark have been debunked in this forum...this just makes whomever joins up with John Edwards that much more important....