GENERAL WESLEY CLARK IS INTERVIEWED ON NBC'S "TODAY SHOW"
women4clark.com
7/14/2003
SPEAKERS: MATT LAUER, NBC ANCHOR
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK (RET.)
LAUER: Retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark served as NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe and led NATO's military action in Kosovo.
General Clark, good morning to you.
CLARK: Good morning, Matt.
LAUER: There's a cover story in Newsweek magazine this week, General, that talks about a secret Iraqi document that lays out orders for a guerrilla-type war after the fall of Saddam Hussein. In other words, that this--these types of attacks we're seeing on the daily basis were part of the Iraqi plan all along. Did we do enough to prepare for this situation?
CLARK: I think the answer is clearly no: first, in terms of putting adequate forces on the ground during the operation to sweep all the way through the country; second, in terms of quickly cutting out the sources of resistance afterwards; and finally, in terms of bringing in international forces and international legitimacy to help us get control of this problem early on. We haven't done it.
LAUER: You disagree with an early decision by Ambassador Bremer in Iraq to disband the Iraqi army and the Baath Party. I think what you said is something like it created huge groups of people who are now unemployed and yet trained to kill.
CLARK: That's exactly right. What we should have done is we should have put that army in the barracks and used it. Same with the Baath Party; should have lined them up, got the information, paid them to stay on duty and then let them take a loyalty pledge to the new organization.
LAUER: And could we have believed that loyalty pledge? These are people who are, you know, critically loyal to Saddam Hussein.
CLARK: Couldn't have believed the pledge. You would have had to check on it and confirm it and watch their actions. But it's always better, in cases like this, to get the potential adversaries out into the open rather than leaving them under cover.
LAUER: So what is the option now, General? Obviously it is the Americans who seem to be targeted on a daily basis. There have been some talks that NATO should come in and take over control of this operation from now on. You're a former NATO guy; what's your opinion on that?
CLARK: I think it'd be a wonderful thing if we can get NATO in. We can't do that unless we go back to the United Nations and get a full U.N. mandate for this operation, which means giving the U.N. increased political authority. If we do that, we might be able to get NATO in.
But you know, Matt, the first thing to do is to follow through on what Paul Bremer's done with the Iraqi council and let the Iraqis have more authority in the decision making. And also pull together that Iraqi police force, the rump army that's being formed and get the Iraqis out to help secure their own facilities and do their own work.
LAUER: As you know, there was an audio tape that surfaced not long ago. It's now believed to contain the authentic voice of Saddam Hussein, so we now think he's still alive. Can this resistance be crushed while people in Iraq still think that Saddam Hussein is alive and might return?
CLARK: No. We have to get Saddam Hussein and his sons.
LAUER: Let me ask you about intelligence, and the flap over the intelligence that led U.S. forces into this war. During a State of the Union address, the president cited an intelligence report that talked about Iraq attempting to buy uranium from Africa. That report has now been discredited. Did the administration, in your opinion, do enough to check the veracity of that intelligence report?
CLARK: No, they didn't, Matt.
But the real issue is not that specific intelligence report. As Condi Rice said yesterday, the president didn't go to war because of one intelligence report or one statement in the State of the Union speech. The question is--and this is the issue--why precisely did the United States, in the middle of the war against terror, decide to attack Iraq? When did we make that decision and why?
LAUER: Well, the reasoning was there was an imminent threat, according to the administration, that Iraq might use or sell its weapons of mass destruction.
Do you think this was a case of an honest mistake, since clearly we haven't found the weapons of mass destruction, or was this a deliberate game, in your opinion, of spinning public opinion?
CLARK: I think there were a lot of factors that converged that made it seem like a good idea right after 9/11 to have a hard target like Iraq, or a state whose government we could take down. And all the polls showed that the American people were predisposed to believe that Saddam was somehow connected. The simple truth is we haven't seen the evidence of that yet.
LAUER: The president is mulling a decision now, General, as to whether or not to send U.S. troops to Liberia. If you were the president, would you send them?
CLARK: Yes, I would.
But the United States armed forces are overstretched because of Iraq. We need to take measures to take care of the men and women in uniform. They need reserves called up. They need a rotation plan. Because, let's face it, we're going to have to sustain the force in Iraq for some time.
LAUER: Let me stick on the subject of ``if you were president.'' There's a grassroots organization called draftWesleyClark.com. They're running radio ads in several states. Coincidentally, those states have early primaries.
Are you going to ask them to stop running the ads?
CLARK: Well, I haven't made a decision on what I'm going to do.
I'll tell you one thing though, Matt: There's a lot of real grassroots support out there. I think what you're seeing, not only in this draft Clark movement, but also in the support for Howard Dean and John Kerry and many other people, is that the American people are increasingly engaged, they're using new tools of communication, like the Internet, in ways that we haven't seen before. And I think this is a very positive thing for the American democracy.
LAUER: How connected are you to that grassroots movement?
CLARK: Oh, I'm not connected to it at all. It started without my knowledge, and I really don't know who's in it, other than a couple of people have told me that they've got about 30,000 people in there of all ages--it's not just young kids. And it sounds pretty impressive.
But what they actually are doing, I really don't know.
LAUER: I'm sure you've talked to some people, General. Obviously, running for president is an expensive proposition. Do you think you would be a candidate who could raise the kind of money it would require to make a successful run?
CLARK: Were I to decide to do that--I just haven't looked at raising money as the principal problem.
There are many issues associated with this. It's a decision my family and I have got to consider, and we are considering it. I am talking to a lot of people. I've received a lot of encouragement on this. And so I'll just have to go through the process and work it out.
LAUER: General Wesley Clark. General, thanks for your time. We appreciate it.
CLARK: Thank you, Matt.
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