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