Month: March 2007
Gen. Clark: Pentagon Conquest Plans in 2002 Included Iraq, Iran and Five Other Countries
I remember hearing Gen. Wesley Clark tell this story during the 2004 campaign. Here’s the transcript from Amy Goodman’s show, Democracy Now, from today:
“This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”
AMY GOODMAN: Do you see a replay in what happened in the lead-up to the war with Iraq — the allegations of the weapons of mass destruction, the media leaping onto the bandwagon?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, in a way. But, you know, history doesn’t repeat itself exactly twice. What I did warn about when I testified in front of Congress in 2002, I said if you want to worry about a state, it shouldn’t be Iraq, it should be Iran. But this government, our administration, wanted to worry about Iraq, not Iran.
I knew why, because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in.
He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.”
I said, “Well, you’re too busy.”
He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September.
I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?”
He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.”
So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?”
He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments.” And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”
So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?”
And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”
I said, “Is it classified?”
He said, “Yes, sir.”
I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?”
He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”
Ann Coulter Calls John Edwards a ‘Faggot’
Ann Coulter at the rightwing CPAC creepfest today:
“I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.”
We really need to hear what the Cheneys think about this — not just Mary and her spouse, Heather Poe, but the parents, Dick and Lynne.
Bush: New Orleans Saints’ ‘Resurgence’ Represents City’s Progress Post-Katrina
Touchdown: In his State of the Union speech, Pres. George Bush signaled the priority his administration gives the post-Katrina recovery of New Orleans — by not mentioning it all. Adding salt to the wound, the president’s mangling of his talking points during a fly-in photo-op to New Orleans today has become the newest addition to the Bush dyslexicon:
Sometimes it’s hard to see progress when you’re living close to the scene. I guess the New Orleans Saints football team represents to me what’s happening in this part of the state — a resurgence, there’s a renewal. Even though there’s a lot of work to do, the spirit of the people down here is strong.
Entire sections of the city lay devastated within a few miles of the spot where the president made his remarks today. But he wouldn’t know that because he didn’t venture beyond the civilized areas into the neighborhoods still in ruins 18 months after the storm.
Incompetence: Cheney Even Screws Up Off the Record Comments
Vice Pres. Cheney gave an interview to reporters traveling abroad with him earlier this week with the understanding that they must say their source was a “senior administration official,” not Cheney himself. But even this he screwed up — big time. Here’s a partial transcript:
That’s not the way I work. I don’t know who writes that, or maybe somebody gets it from some source who doesn’t know what I‘m doing, or isn’t involved in it.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The reason the President wanted me to come, obviously, is because of the continuing threat that exists in this part of the world on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border — a threat to Afghanistan, clearly, in our efforts there, the Taliban, cross-border operations; a threat to Musharraf and his government…
Let me just make one editorial comment here. I‘ve seen some press reporting says, “Cheney went in to beat up on them, threaten them.” That’s not the way I work. I don’t know who writes that, or maybe somebody gets it from some source who doesn’t know what I‘m doing, or isn’t involved in it. But the idea that I‘d go in and threaten someone is an invalid misreading of the way I do business.
I would describe my sessions both in Pakistan and Afghanistan as very productive. We’ve had notable successes in both places. I‘ve often said before and I believe it’s still true that we’ve captured and killed more al Qaeda in Pakistan than anyplace else. And I think we’re making progress in Afghanistan.
My sense of it was Karzai was more positive and optimistic than I‘d seen in my recent visits. That doesn’t mean that there’s no threat. That doesn’t mean — no rosy scenario. There’s a hell of a lot of work to be done…
Q You’ve spoken … though, about some of the things that Speaker Pelosi and Representative Murtha have said how that does play to the hands of —
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I was asked by one of your colleagues.
Q But your answer was very articulate.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I responded very carefully.
Q And you suggested that they make — they lend comfort to terrorists, essentially.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, what I said was that that the al Qaeda strategy is based on the notion that they can break the will of the American people. They know they can’t beat us in a stand-up fight. But they do believe — and I think there’s evidence to support this — that they can, in fact, force us to change our policy if they just kill enough Americans, create enough havoc out there. And they cite Beirut in 1983; Mogadishu, 1993, kill Americans, America changes its policy and withdraws. And Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri believe this. They talk about it. It’s not a mystery.
And my point was that if we follow what I believe Speaker Pelosi really wants to do in terms of withdraw, that that would validate the al Qaeda strategy. I was very careful in those words I selected. I didn’t say “give aid and comfort to terrorists.” I didn’t say “unpatriotic.” I said it would validate the al Qaeda strategy….
Phyllis Schafly Hates George Bush — and America
Not so very long ago, the right wing told us that anyone who criticized Pres. George Bush was “Bush hater” — and that criticizing our president during a time of war was tantamount to hating America.
“We’ve got to stop this nonsense of teaching our schoolchildren in foreign languages.”
— Phyllis Schafly
— Phyllis Schafly
Well, look who is hatin’ on America now:
[The] annual Conservative Political Action Conference that began this morning is a three-day extravaganza of activism in which purists, not pragmatists, are on parade — and they are busy bashing the president.
“We cannot afford to be ‘Bush Republicans,'” Phyllis Schlafly said, to great applause, in the vast Omni Hotel’s largest ballroom. “This has got to be a grassroots party,” and works best as such, as when “the whole conservative movement rose up to tell George Bush that we could not have Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court.”
Why, oh, why do conservatives hate America?
But wait, there’s more:
“We’ve got to stop this nonsense of teaching our schoolchildren in foreign languages,” she told the crowd. “We cannot afford to let Mexico turn us into a two-language nation.”
She was incensed, she said, that that George Bush had made such a big deal of signing the bill into law that would provide for a fence along part of the border between the countries: “Was that dishonest? I’ve been looking at TV every night and haven’t seen that fence being built yet. We want that fence!”
The less educated Americans are, the easier they are too fool. Right, Phyllis?
