Decline of the Wes

The Draft Clark movement, allegedly grassroots in nature, is in full-fledged uberPolitical high-falutin' infighting slendor. I love it!

Must Read Blogging: Patriot Paradox - Wesley Clark: A Primer

NOT QUITE RIGHT - an opinion about Clark.

More about infighting in the Clark campaign.

Wes might be smart but his campaign staff are dumb.

Clark Violates Campaign Law?

Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark may have violated federal election laws by discussing his presidential campaign during recent paid appearances, according to campaign finance experts.

Clark, a newcomer to presidential politics, touted his candidacy during paid appearances at DePauw University in Indiana and other campuses after he entered the presidential race on Sept. 17. Under the laws governing the financing of presidential campaigns, candidates cannot be paid by corporations, labor unions, individuals or even universities for campaign-related events. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) considers such paid political appearances akin to a financial contribution to a candidate.

Clark May Have Broken Law in Paid Speeches (washingtonpost.com)

Our Man Wes sez Rush Limbaugh should be fired for saying the media like Dononvan McNabb because he's black.

All Stars, No Cattle

Our Man Wes is taking a brutal beating from all sides. Ah, well -- sooner or later he will get his act together.

However, the Clark phenomenon is actually not yet a phenomenon, except in the hyperventilating or the "hardball media" where hyperventilating passes for insight. The political correspondents of the major media could put lipstick on a sow and make her the homecoming queen for Saturday night.

But Sunday morning always follows Saturday night. Wesley Clark has yet to demonstrate that he is more than a figment of media hyperventilation, and the polls that show him to be "the leading candidate" are misleading. The pollsters are asking everybody, including a lot of people who won't have anything to say about it. A Baptist preacher in Tupelo may have definite ideas about who the cardinals of Rome should choose to succeed John Paul II, but you might as well ask the Vatican cat.

A slight pause for course correction - The Washington Times: Pruden on Politics

Wes and the Osama of the Balkans

In August 1994, during the height of the Bosnian civil war, Clark came to Banja Luka, met a Serb general and ended up looking like a perfect chump.

The Serb, Ratko Mladic, suckered Clark into exchanging hats and posing for pictures. At the time, Clark was a three-star general and head of operations at the Pentagon.

It seemed like a harmless lark at the time, two generals exchanging snappy covers and smiling for the camera. A few jokes, a few laughs, and then off to a lunch hosted by the Serb.

But now Clark is running for president of the United States and Mladic, indicted for war crimes in 1995, is a fugitive with a $5 million U.S. price on his head, the Osama of the Balkans.

Backcountry Conservative: More on Mladic and Clark

This guy is obssessed with Our Man Wesley.

"Wesley & Me": A Real-Life Docudrama

A second letter, dated Sept. 23, does refer to that bloodshed. Moore recalls his own opposition to the war while summarizing news reports that Clark wanted to utilize ground troops, a move that might have reduced the number of civilian deaths. But the follow-up letter doesn’t mention the huge quantities of depleted uranium used in Yugoslavia under Clark’s authority. Or the large number of cluster bombs that were dropped under his command.

When each 1,000-pound “combined effects munition" exploded, a couple of hundred “bomblets" shot out in all directions. Little parachutes aided in dispersal of the bomblets to hit what the manufacturer called “soft targets." Beforehand, though, each bomblet broke into about 300 pieces of jagged steel shrapnel.

Guerrilla News Network

"A four star deer in the headlights"

Wesley Clark was a good General, but only marginally so. He served his country adequately in times of war and peace, and is generally looked upon favorably by many in both political parties. On the battlefield, Clark could claim honor and got it. On the political battlefield, he shamelessly sullies himself by accusing a war time administration over its handling of Iraq, knowing full well that as a military man, he has seen and participated in far worse. This from the General who waged war from 15,000 feet over Bosnia, and counseled the Clinton White House against action in Rwanda, where mass genocide ensued.

As stated earlier, Clark has a steep learning curve in regard to domestic policy. At present, he is two steps below Arnold Schwarzenegger. If ranting about the loss of three million jobs, UN participation, and spending eighty-seven billion dollars on the war is "New," than somebody had better inform the other nine Democrats, and the media, that the hate-laced rhetoric we've been hearing from them these past months has fallen on deaf ears. There's a new Democrat in the race now. And the only difference from his contemporaries in the Democratic party is the four stars upon his shoulders, and nothing else.

href="http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article2701.html">The "New" Democrat

Found on Right-Thinking

Wes and corporate databases

Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark helped an Arkansas information company win a contract to assist development of an airline passenger screening system, one of the largest surveillance programs ever devised by the government.

Starting just after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Clark sought out dozens of government and industry officials on behalf of Acxiom Corp., a data powerhouse that maintains names, addresses and a wide array of personal details about nearly every adult in the United States and their households, according to interviews and documents.

Clark Worked For Arkansas Data Firm (washingtonpost.com)

Draft Clark - was it really grass roots?

And at any rate, it's now imploding on itself. Ole Wes wasn't what they thought he was, and in reality they aren't what they thought they were.

The suspicion that the Draft Clark movement was something less than a purely organic groundswell of support has been entertained seriously by political veterans. University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in mid-August that, in the paper's words, he "suspects the draft-Wesley Clark Internet movement may have been more planned and coordinated than has been told." Sabato was directly quoted as saying, "I think the real story of this is yet to be written. I don't believe in spontaneous political movements."

TAP: Web Feature: Fan Friction. by Garance Franke-Ruta. September 25, 2003.

One good thing about Ole Wes - he loves Republicans!

Or is that bad?

Democratic presidential hopeful General Wesley Clark offered lavish praise for the Bush Administration and its key players in a speech to Republicans -- just two years ago, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal!

During extended remarks delivered at the Pulaski County GOP Lincoln Day Dinner in Little Rock, Arkansas on May 11, 2001, General Clark declared: "And I'm very glad we've got the great team in office, men like Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice... people I know very well - our president George W. Bush. We need them there."

A video of Clark making the comments has surfaced, DRUDGE can reveal.

Clark praised Reagan for improving the military:

"We were really helped when President Ronald Reagan came in. I remember non-commissioned officers who were going to retire and they re-enlisted because they believed in President Reagan."

American RealPolitik: Interesting...

"Because I used to love her, but it's all over now...."

Swapping hats and yucking it up

This is just plain awesome. Now we see if the Left are principled or just White House uber alles worms.

Memo to all the Democratic party presidential candidates who aren't retired Gen. Wesley Clark:

On August 27, 1994, representing the Joint Chiefs of Staff during a fact-finding mission to Bosnia, Clark "ignored State Department warnings not to meet with Serb officials suspected of ordering deaths of civilians in a campaign known as ethnic cleansing" and paid a courtesy call on Serbian army commander Ratko Mladic. Mladic was already the subject of multiple U.S. war-crimes charges: "artillery attacks on civilians in Sarajevo" and the "razing of Muslim towns and villages," along with random acts of "mass murder." According to a contemporaneous Washington Post report: "On Friday [August 26, 1994] and again on Saturday, State Department officials said, they instructed [Clark] not to go, but he went anyway." The meeting "occurred as the Clinton administration is trying to isolate the Serbs in advance of possible military action against them."

But wait, there's more--there's a "visual," as they say in the 30-second attack-ad business.

"What State Department officials said they found especially disturbing was a photograph of Clark and Mladic wearing each other's caps. The picture appeared in several European newspapers, U.S. officials said. Clark accepted as gifts Mladic's hat, a bottle of brandy, and a pistol inscribed in Cyrillic, U.S. officials said. 'It's like cavorting with Hermann Goering,' one U.S. official complained."


Clark and Mladic, swapping hats and yucking it up


Herewith, then, Wesley Clark, Democratic candidate for president of the United States, cavorting with "Hermann Goering"--the suspected war criminal Ratko Mladic, who to this day is a fugitive wanted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal and presumed to be hiding somewhere in Serbia.

Tomorrow's Opposition Research Today

Bob Herbert asks:

Is Wesley Clark -- first in his class at West Point, Rhodes scholar, former NATO supreme allied commander, holder of the Purple Heart and Silver Star -- the real deal, or just a mirage?

Is this (by all accounts) brilliant former general really a dream candidate for the parched and leaderless Democrats, or just a dream?

Mercury News

Lee at Right Thinking gives Michael Moore and Our Man Wes a brisk fisking.

Strange Bedfellows

Just about the last place on Mother Earth I would have ever expected to find one of our blogs mentioned is on a flaming American Leftie hatchetblog like Monkey Media Report. But Wesley Clark has made widely divergent people allies, and so if you click the link below, then find the picture of the Eisenhower doll and click on it, you wind up at WesleyWatch.

Amazing. My face is turning red and I don't know if it is because I am flattered or embarrassed.

Monkey Media Report

Donald Sensing say things in the Clark camp are a little, well, disorderly.

Howie Dean has been abandoned, media now touting Hillary Clinton's sock puppet: Jim Geraghty on Wesley Clark on National Review Online

Wes says he'd have been a Republican "if Karl Rove had returned my phone calls". Rove didn't, so Clark became a Democrat. So reports Newsweek.

"Howard Dean with flags"

"No other Democratic candidate, not even John Kerry, could stand in front of two 75 mm howitzers on the quad of a nearly all-male military college and defend the antiwar left without looking faintly ridiculous. Wesley Clark is Howard Dean with flags."

Wesley Clark's Patriot Act - The general unveils his campaign message in South Carolina

More about the Wesley Clark Two Step:

"'Let's make one thing real clear, I would never have voted for this war,' Clark said before a speech at the University of Iowa. 'I've gotten a very consistent record on this. There was no imminent threat. This was not a case of pre-emptive war. I would have voted for the right kind of leverage to get a diplomatic solution, an international solution to the challenge of Saddam Hussein.' "

Democratic candidate seeks to clarify comments on Iraq resolution

Charles Rangel - Bill Clinton's Tom?

Rangel has a crush on Clark, I guess:

"He can save this goddam nation from self-destruction," declares New York Congressman Charles Rangel, who is arranging a meeting for Clark with the Congressional Black Caucus, possibly as early as this week. But Rangel acknowledges that he has never met Clark in person (they have talked on the phone) and didn't know a thing about Clark until he started catching the general's criticism of the Iraq war on cnn.

TIME.com: The General Jumps In -- Sep. 29, 2003

A nice target

That's what Clark made himself when he stepped into this race. The problem for him is that there are so many screw ups, and no politicians willing to cover up for him yet. Clark can't seal his records (ala Dean in Vermont), and he hasn't been in politics long enough for the usual Donk crowd to cover up his gaffs. What gaffs, you ask? Hmmmmmmmmmm....

Well, let me start with this. I've stated previously that Clark was a Command failure. Whatever his actions in the field, when it came to command decisions he flunked. And now, I'm not the only one saying that. Via Kim du Toit come two articles about Clark and his military failures. One from the Washington Times, and the other from the American Prowler.

From the Washington Times: "Gen. Clark read Mr. Milosevic wrong, helping to provoke the Kosovo war, which he then fought badly. Gen. Clark picked up where he left off in his second career as a television kibitzer of military operations. As an analyst for CNN, Gen. Clark harshly criticized the war plan for Iraq devised by Gen. Tommy Franks, the CENTCOM commander, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Gen. Clark turned out to be completely wrong.

It says something fascinating about the Democratic field that this failed general is the class of it."

From the American Prowler: "Clark was fired (from the Kosavo campain - RD) because of his overweening ego and because he -- like so many others -- misjudged Clinton. He might have thought he could get away with what he was doing going around Cohen and Shelton, that Lil' Billy would protect him. So Clark was fired and to no one's surprise (except perhaps Clark's) Clinton didn't protect him."

I learned about Clark after almost being put under his command. I thank my lucky stars that I never had to serve under him. Clark is the epidome of what was wrong with the military under Clinton. Why would I elect a commander in chief who has already proven he can't hack it?

Record Shows Clark Cheered Iraq War as "Right Call"

The Talking Heads are proclaiming Wesley Clark to be anti-War in Iraq, but check this out:

As time wore on, Clark's reservations seemed to give way. Clark explained on CNN (1/21/03) that if he had been in charge, "I probably wouldn't have made the moves that got us to this point. But just assuming that we're here at this point, then I think that the president is going to have to move ahead, despite the fact that the allies have reservations." As he later elaborated (CNN, 2/5/03): "The credibility of the United States is on the line, and Saddam Hussein has these weapons and so, you know, we're going to go ahead and do this and the rest of the world's got to get with us.... The U.N. has got to come in and belly up to the bar on this. But the president of the United States has put his credibility on the line, too. And so this is the time that these nations around the world, and the United Nations, are going to have to look at this evidence and decide who they line up with."

On the question of Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, Clark seemed remarkably confident of their existence. Clark told CNN's Miles O'Brien that Saddam Hussein "does have weapons of mass destruction." When O'Brien asked, "And you could say that categorically?" Clark was resolute: "Absolutely" (1/18/03). When CNN's Zahn (4/2/03) asked if he had any doubts about finding the weapons, Clark responded: "I think they will be found. There's so much intelligence on this."

After the fall of Baghdad, any remaining qualms Clark had about the wisdom of the war seemed to evaporate. "Liberation is at hand. Liberation-- the powerful balm that justifies painful sacrifice, erases lingering doubt and reinforces bold actions," Clark wrote in a London Times column (4/10/03). "Already the scent of victory is in the air." Though he had been critical of Pentagon tactics, Clark was exuberant about the results of "a lean plan, using only about a third of the ground combat power of the Gulf War. If the alternative to attacking in March with the equivalent of four divisions was to wait until late April to attack with five, they certainly made the right call." "

Wesley Clark: The New Anti-War Candidate?

Clark Critiqued from the Far Left

"Indeed, it is believed in military circles that Clark's Pristina incident was the final straw that led the Pentagon to relieve him of his duties (actually retire him earlier). Clark had also angered the Pentagon brass--and Secretary of Defense William Cohen in particular--with his numerous media appearances and repeated public requests for more weapons and for more freedom to wage the Kosovo war the way he wanted (with ground troops). At one point, according to media reports, Defense Secretary Cohen, through Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton, told Clark to 'get your fucking face off of TV.' "

Wesley Clark's 'High Noon' Moment

Wes Clark's bad day

He mangled his position on the congressional Iraq resolution, and when the going got tough, he summoned a press aide with a cry of "Mary, help!" Tell me again why this guy should make Howard Dean and John Kerry quake in their boots?

Salon.com | Wes Clark's bad day

More, more, more - How do you like it? How do you like it?

I have read the accounts of the Clark interviews and my reaction is despair and anger. Why did my party's best operatives think it would be a good idea to subject their neophyte candidate to the country's savviest reporters for over an hour? Why have my party's elders rallied around a candidate who is so shockingly uninformed about core issues and his own positions? I am not a Dean supporter — but I am angry that our party's leaders have anointed an alternative to him who seems even more ignorant and unprepared — and that this supposed 'anti-war' candidate turns out to have been in favor of both the war resolution and Richard Nixon!! And let's not even talk about the Clintons. Today I am embarrassed to be a Democrat."

ABCNEWS.com : The Note

General Clark as a leader and strategist might leave a lot to be desired.

"Gen. Clark was CINCEUR when the Kosovo war began, and bears much of the responsibility for President Clinton's decision to try to bomb Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic out of Kosovo. Gen. Clark argued that after a few days of bombing, Mr. Milosevic would fold his tent and slink away. When the Serbs didn't budge after months of bombing, Gen. Clark lost Mr. Clinton's favor.

As the war dragged on, Gen. Clark advocated the use of ground troops. This put him at loggerheads with Gen. Henry Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and with Gen. Eric Shinseki, chief of staff of the Army, who thought this was a terrible idea. These generals faulted Gen. Clark for getting America into an unnecessary war, and for having done a poor job of preparing for it. "

Gee.

"...getting America into an unnecessary war, and for having done a poor job of preparing for it."

Sound familiar?

More: Tracing Clark's military map - The Washington Times: Commentary

Judicious Asininity asks: Why is General Wesley Clark in the race?

Good golly there are so many links re: tyhis here Clark fella.

Will the Left really suckle upon this guy, as the media seem to indicate and encourage? The following is from Indymedia. They are Leftists. Check it out:

Gen. Clark in the Balkans also pursued policies that increased civilian casualties, such as deliberate bombing from high altitude and his policy to cut off fuel, food and energy from the civilians of Belgrade in wintertime. Clark also cozied up to at least one man accused of war crimes and ethnic cleansing, Bosnian commander Ratko Mladic.

Do antiwar, peace-activist supporters of Howard Dean really want this kind of twitchy-fingered militarist hot-head a heartbeat away from the nuclear button? Would they really want a Commander-in-Chief Wesley Clark?

Clark’s incompetence, disregard for human life, dishonesty and criticism of Clinton policies cost him his command. President Clinton and Defense Secretary William Cohen removed Clark months ahead of schedule.

But this did not alter the special bond between Clark and the Clintons that began in 1993, and that is evident today in their effort to control his presidential campaign.

What the national media are not telling you, of course, is that General Clark’s ascent to military four-stardom was itself a political act orchestrated by the Clintons.

There's more here: Wesley Clark: A Clinton by Another Name?

Please remember to wash your hands after surfing Indymedia.

Clark Backtracks on Iraq Vote Comments

I guess Day One of the Clark Campaign was too early to start screwing up.

Day Two suffices nicely, though:

Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark backtracked from a day-old statement that he probably would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq, saying Friday he "would never have voted for this war."

The retired Army general, an opponent of the conflict, surprised supporters when he indicated in an interview with reporters Thursday that he likely would have supported the resolution. On Friday, Clark sought to clarify his comments in an interview with The Associated Press.

"Let's make one thing real clear, I would never have voted for this war," Clark said before a speech at the University of Iowa. "I've gotten a very consistent record on this. There was no imminent threat. This was not a case of pre-emptive war. I would have voted for the right kind of leverage to get a diplomatic solution, an international solution to the challenge of Saddam Hussein."

Clark's initial remarks left members of his campaign team a bit flummoxed.

Read more here: Yahoo! News

This is this blog's inaugural post.

Do I really need to explian what you'll find her?

No.

I don't.