Wesley Clark’s Imaginary Candidacy
Exclusive commentary by CK Rairden
The Washington Dispatch
Nov 5, 2003
Someone has to ask it. Is General Wesley Clark really running for the Democrat nomination for president? Wait--I’m sure he is. I got a call from the White House telling me so. Or was it from around the White House? Or was it from that Middle East think tank in Canada?
Wes Clark has made many position changes and been caught in several odd fabrications since he entered the race only a month and a half ago. So much so that it’s not that far fetched to “imagine” Wes Clark having an imaginary friend that keeps these rumors and gossip humming. At best he has an active imagination.
One now has to wonder how long it will take for him to have an imaginary candidacy.
Clark entered the race with the handprints of the Clintons and the DLC all over him in September for one reason. Shut down Howard Dean’s momentum. So far, he has failed. Clark claimed to be a straight-talker, but quickly turned out to be a four-star fibber. His fabrications seem to now be strengthening Dean while turning a once respected military General into a sad joke.
His imagination is well documented and though there are more--here is the highlight reel.
--He claimed on Meet the Press in June that he received a phone call from the White House encouraging him to push the idea that there was “a concerted effort during the fall of 2001, starting immediately after 9/11, to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein.” No call was placed from the White House.
--He then claimed the call came from “around the White House.” He couldn’t really pin that down either.
--Then Clark stated that the call came from “a Middle-East think tank in Canada. Finally Thomas Hecht, founder of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies, told the Toronto Star he placed the call to Clark. The think tank is in Montreal, which if you are looking at a globe, is around the globe from the White House.
--He was for the Iraq war, then against it. Then he wasn’t sure.
--He said he would have been a Republican only if Karl Rove would have returned his phone calls; trouble is, there were no phone calls logged to Karl Rove from the General. Transcripts and phone logs really hurt the General’s credibility.
--He also told KTAR radio in Phoenix that the White House tried to get him fired from his job as an analyst for CNN but when pressed admitted he had no proof of the accusation, but had heard “rumors.”
Now Wes is firing up the rumor mill again. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that Clark told an audience of 400 supporters in Arkansas on Monday night that “the Bush administration contemplated overturning as many as seven Middle Eastern and African governments,” soon after the attacks on America on 9/11. The report by Paul Barton continued by stating that Clark “learned while visiting with Pentagon acquaintances in the fall of 2001 that such thinking had already been put on paper, at least in a very preliminary form.”
But the reporters wanted more, demanding that Clark show some proof besides another imaginary allegation. Once pressed--Clark admitted he had never seen any memo with a plan to attack the seven mentioned nations. But he did list them off for the crowd. The seven supposedly are Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.
Clark kept going, “But they told me there was something, some kind of a memo or something. I never saw it. I said, ‘Stop, I don’t want see anything more. I just didn’t want to get into it,” the Democrat-Gazette reported in its Monday edition.
I know just how Wes Clark feels; Stop, I don’t want to hear anymore either.
Wes never identifies who “they” is/was or could be. Perhaps it’s all in his active imagination. Or perhaps it was the Montreal Middle-East think tank. But when all else failed, the four star fibber went back to his tried and true rumor mongering Washington excuse, “"It’s in my book, you only have to listen to the gossip around Washington and to hear what the neo-conservatives are saying and you will get the flavor of this.”
Well if it's in Clark’s book it must be true, right? The only truth is Wes Clark will say absolutely anything, then when pressed play the rumor/gossip card when he is exposed for his active imagination.
Wesley Clark came out of the box and entered the Democrat race for the presidency with a credibility problem. His first week was a four-star disaster of changing positions on the war with Iraq. He still received the backing of the DLC with cash and support. And now, at this late date, they have to stick with him a bit longer--but his credibility is costing him dearly in the early primary states. He has decided to skip Iowa and is trailing badly in New Hampshire. He has done nothing to derail Howard Dean and if something isn’t fixed immediately Clark is in danger of losing so much support his candidacy will become nothing more than a figment of the DLC and the Clintonista’s imaginations.
Clark’s latest plan is to make an attempt to rally some kind of base by playing to his strength on military issues. He is scheduled to issue a major policy address on Iraq on Thursday in South Carolina. It’s hard to tell what rumors and gossip Clark will unveil to convince primary voters that he is the anti-war candidate that knows how to fight a war.
But if history is any indication one thing is certain, some sort of explanation or revision will follow on Friday.
CK Rairden is a political columnist for The Landmark and a freelance writer. |
