and he testified against going into Iraq and wrote about it as well.
You don't know anything about General Clark, and yet you are in this thread......clumping him in a group that you say bah humbug to.
It would have been better for you to ask questions about him rather than to put him down without knowing anything about him. Maybe that tactic would have been more reasonable.
Here's some information on him to assist you in making a better determination about him as opposed to making a stereotypical judgement just because you can.
This is background information to let you know that Wes Clark was never Typical as a Military type.
Waiting for the GeneralBy Elizabeth Drew
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16795 Clark displeased the defense secretary, Bill Cohen, and General Hugh Shelton, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by arguing strenuously that—contrary to Clinton's decision— the option of using ground troops in Kosovo should remain open. But the problem seems to have gone further back. Some top military leaders objected to the idea of the US military fighting a war for humanitarian reasons. Clark had also favored military action against the genocide in Rwanda. http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001104.html Clark was almost alone in pushing for a humanitarian intervention in Rwanda.Pulitzer award winning Samantha Power for her book "A Problem from Hell" : America and the Age of Genocidehttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060541644/qid=1114936910/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-7692952-2877630?v=glance&s=booksendorsed Wes Clark
http://www.kiddingonthesquare.com/2003/12/index.htmlThe following excerpts from Power's book give the details. The narrative surrounding the quotes was written by another person commenting on the book. Note especially Power's last comment below on Clark's pariah status in Washington:
General Clark is one of the heroes of Samantha Power's book. She introduces him on the second page of her
chapter on Rwanda and describes his distress on learning about the genocide there and not being able to contact anyone in the Pentagon who really knew anything about it and/or about the Hutu and Tutsi.
She writes, "He frantically telephoned around the Pentagon for insight into the ethnic dimension of events in Rwanda. Unfortunately, Rwanda had never been of more than marginal concern to Washington's most influential planners" (p. 330) .
He advocated multinational action of some kind to stop the genocide. "Lieutenant General Wesley Clark looked to the White House for leadership. 'The Pentagon is always going to be the last to want to intervene,' he says. 'It is up to the civilians to tell us they want to do something and we'll figure out how to do it.' But with no powerful personalities or high-ranking officials arguing forcefully for meaningful action, midlevel Pentagon officials held sway, vetoing or stalling on hesitant proposals put forward by midlevel State Department and NSC officials" (p. 373).
According to Power,
General Clark was already passionate about humanitarian concerns, especially genocide, before his appointment as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces in Europe. She details his efforts in behalf of the Dayton Peace Accords and his brilliant command of NATO forces in Kosovo. Her chapter on Kosovo ends, "The man who probably contributed more than any other individual to Milosvevic's battlefield defeat was General Wesley Clark. The NATO bombing campaign succeeded in removing brutal Serb police units from Kosovo, in ensuring the return on 1.3 million Kosovo Albanians, and in securing for Albanians the right of self-governance."
"Yet in Washington Clark was a pariah. In July 1999 he was curtly informed that he would be replaced as supreme allied commander for Europe. This forced his retirement and ended thirty-four years of distinguished service.
Favoring humanitarian intervention had never been a great career move."Samantha Power's comments on Wesley Clark at the December 17, 2003, press conference in Concord, New Hampshire after the General's testimony at the Hague .
"Good afternoon. It's a real honor for me to be here with General Clark, and with Edita Tahiri. My name is Samantha Power. I spent about seven years looking into American responses to genocide in the twentieth century, and discovered something that may not surprise you but that did surprise me, which was that until 1999 the United States had actually never intervened to prevent genocide in our nation's history. Successive American presidents had done an absolutely terrific job pledging never again, and remembering the holocaust, but ultimately when genocide confronted them, they weighed the costs and the benefits of intervention, and they decided that the risks of getting involved were actually far greater than the other non-costs from the standpoint of the American public, of staying uninvolved or being bystanders. That changed in the mid-1990s, and it changed in large measure because General Clark rose through the ranks of the American military.
The mark of leadership is not to standup when everybody is standing, but rather to actually stand up when no one else is standing. And it was Pentagon reluctance to intervene in Rwanda, and in Bosnia, that actually made it much, much easier for political leaders to turn away. When the estimates started coming out of the Pentagon that were much more constructive, and proactive, and creative, one of the many deterrents to intervention melted away. And so I think, again, in discussing briefly the General's testimony, it's important to remember why he was able to testify at the Hague, and he testified because he decided to own something that was politically very, very unfashionable at the time."
http://www.kiddingonthesquare.com/2004/01/index.html
"If there was one thing that convinced me that Clark was a champion of Democratic values, it was his vocal support for humanitarian intervention to stop genocide in Rwanda and the Balkans. The fact remains that several Democratic leaders - the current standard bearers of our party - shirked from their duty of defending human rights and honoring multilateral agreements because it was not politically popular at the time. Clark, on the other hand, advocated intervention to stop the genocide in Rwanda and the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. Well, those credentials are Democratic enough for me."
http://www.lindsayfincher.com/2004/02/
and some information on his view on Pentagon Spending:
http://www.nhpr.org/node/5339 and audito to listen to at about 35:30.
"I think General Eisenhower was exactly right. I think we should be concerned about the military industrial complex. I think if you look at where the country is today, you've consolidated all these defense firms into a few large firms, like Halliburton, with contacts and contracts at the highest level of government.
You've got most of the retired Generals, are one way or another, associated with the defense firms. That's the reason that you'll find very few of them speaking out in any public way. I'm not. When I got out I determined I wasn't going to sell arms, I was going to do as little as possible with the Defense Department, because I just figured it was time to make a new start.
But I think that the military industrial complex does wield a lot of influence. I'd like to see us create a different complex, and I'm going to be talking about foreign policy in a major speech tomorrow, but
we need to create an agency that is not about waging war, but about creating the conditions for Peace around the world. We need some people who will be advocates for Peace, advocates for economic development not just advocates for better weapons systems. So we need to create countervailing power to the military industrial complex."
Clark: Don't spare Pentagon
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/25/elec04.prez.debate/"We're faced with a very serious deficit problem. We need to keep the--we need to go back to the top 2 percent and repeal those tax cuts and we need to put all the government spending programs on the table, including the military programs"
And what Wes Clark has done since he's been out of the military:
Amicus Brief To the United States Supreme Court,February 19, 2003
Based on decades of experience, amici have concluded that a highly qualified, racially diverse officer corps educated and trained to command our nation’s racially diverse enlisted ranks is essential to the military’s ability to fulfill its principal mission to provide national security.
The primary sources for the nation’s officer corps are the service academies and the ROTC, the latter comprised of students already admitted to participating colleges and universities. At present, the military cannot achieve an officer corps that is both highly qualified and racially diverse unless the service academies and the ROTC use limited race-conscious recruiting and admissions policies.
http://www.texasforclark.com/affirmative.htm ----------------
Wavecrest - the company Clark started after he retired....But right now,
General Clark wants to talk about bicycles. The retired general has been devoting much of his time to running a company making a new kind of electric motor that does not require gears or a transmission, but uses computer algorithms to maximize torque and efficiency. The company, WaveCrest Laboratories of Dulles, Va., hopes to put these motors into hybrid gas-electric cars or even hydrogen-powered fuel-cell cars one day. But for now, WaveCrest is focused on bikes. By adding one of its "adaptive motors" to a conventional bicycle
frame, WaveCrest claims that its two-wheeler can go Lance Armstrong speed - 30 miles an hour - with hardly any pedaling at all.
snip
That sweet spot occurs in many electric motors when they are spinning at thousands of revolutions per minute. When used in a vehicle, some kind of transmission or reduction gearing is needed to slow things down so the wheels can turn at their proper rate, said Elias Strangas, an electrical engineering professor at Michigan State University. WaveCrest's design could eliminate the need for a transmission or gears by getting the motor's r.p.m. to match the wheel's needs. Small motors could even be put at the wheels themselves instead of having one large motor under a car's hood. The WaveCrest bicycle relies on such a setup.
These so called in-hub motors could drastically cut the weight of a hybrid or fuel-cell car, Mr. Brauer said. And that could allow the car to carry extra batteries and extend its range.
http://greenspeed.us/wesley_clark.htm------------
Emergency Preparedness Expert:Clark has been involved in emergency preparedness for a long time as well....before he ran for any political office! Now wouldn't that be nice to have in addition to everything else Clark offers in expertise, a real expert on that subject. Wouldn't have to have him wait for a briefing....
http://www.wittassociates.com/http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2005_March_23/ai_n13467014http://www.muhajabah.com/clarkblog/2005/06/general_wesley_clark_former_na.php------------
Wes Clark is a true intellectual who quotes Plato regularily.....a Rhodes Scholar who graduated from Oxford University who majored in Economics, Philosophy and Political Science, was a
White House Fellow, and now a senior fellow at the Burke Center at UCLA--
http://cbs5.com/education/local_story_261160914.htmlHis first lecture was on torture.
who speaks 3 languages apart from English.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=53 ...
Interviews
Wesley Clark: Why We Should Care About Darfur
April 20,2006
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/04/10/a_us_plan_for_darfur/US plan for Darfur
By Wesley Clark and John Prendergast | April 10, 2006
http://www.dems.us/clark_wes /
November 07, 2005
Clark Steps Up For Darfur, Sudan
http://savedarfur.org/index.php?q=news/newsarchives/200... Deja vu in Darfur - 9/01/2005
Sudan Tribune
Former NATO Commander Wesley Clark is urging the U.N. Security Council to dispatch about 12,000 NATO troops to Darfur to protect civilians and humanitarian operations until a large contingent of African troops is deployed there next year.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=48... Commentary
Wesley Clark: NATO Forces Needed in Darfur
August 22, 2005
http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/USATODAY/2004/07/06/501055?extID=10026Out of time in Darfur
By Wesley Clark and John Prendergast | Jul 06 '04For the past year, the international community has shamefully acquiesced to the crimes against humanity occurring daily in the Sudanese province of Darfur.
"Janjaweed" militias, Arabs backed by the Sudanese government, are continuing to conduct mop-up operations against non-Arab villagers in a massive ethnic-cleansing campaign in the region. The current conflict flared early last year when two rebel groups in Darfur attacked government forces. The swelling crisis could leave hundreds of thousands dead in the coming months.
Also, Clark is a board member of this group here:
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3060&l=1as a Vice Chair -- of which George Soros is a chairman...
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=1139&l=1And here's some information on the Rwanda-Time line, and some comments about Wes Clark's involvement in attempting to get something done about it.
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/4018.htmland he just happens to know a thing or two about Science and Education, as a former professor
Testimony before the Senate on Education:
http://www.house.gov/ed_workforce/hearings/107th/edr/impaid110801/clark.htmhttp://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2006/jun/10/566627991.htmlWesley Clark touts science at YearlyKos
Retired general slams 'politicization' of researchhttp://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/May05/Commencement/Clark_speech.htmlTime Travel Clarification
What Wesley Clark Really Said About Time Travelby Brian McWilliams
October 14, 2003
http://www.pc-radio.com/clark-timetravel.htmlOn September 30, I published an article at Wired News entitled Clark Campaigns at Light Speed.
The article reported on remarks made by Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark during a campaign event Sept. 27 in New Castle, New Hampshire. At the event, Clark stated his belief that humans will someday be able to travel faster than the speed of light.
Due to a faulty understanding of physics on my part, I originally reported that Clark had professed a belief in the possibility of time travel. While some experts have previously said that travelling faster than light implies time travel, Clark in fact did not specifically profess an interest in time travel.
After several readers e-mailed me about this aspect of my article, later on Sept. 30 I revised the online version of the story to avoid suggesting Clark had advocated research into time travel. (The quotes attributed to him, of course, remained unchanged.)
Unfortunately, my reporting error is travelling at light speed and has been duplicated in media outlets around the world. Newspapers including the Washington Post and New York Times as well as late-night TV show hosts Jay Leno and Dave Letterman have borrowed the time travel idea from my story. Given the current impossibility of rewinding time, my efforts now to undo this mistake may be futile. But I hope to prevent this mis-reporting of Clark's remarks from spreading further. To that end, I have made an audio recording of the relevant section of Clark's Sept. 27 campaign speech available here:
http://www.pc-radio.com/clark-nasa.mp3The audio is about 3 min. 45 sec. and the file is about 668 KB. Clark's comments about faster-than-light travel are at about 3:05. Feel free to publicize this link, and/or to download the file and distribute it freely. I can also provide on request a high fidelity version of the audio for broadcast.
Sincerely,
Brian S. McWilliams
PC-radio.com
http://www.presidentialufo.com/time_travel.htmThere is so much more that I could post until it isn't even funny!