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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: aladin who wrote (112862)	8/26/2003 10:26:06 AM
From: GST	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Its hard to compare anybody to a guy with military experience like Bush -- he looked so spiffy preening for the cameras in that flight jacket on the deck of a carrier declaring the end of combat in Iraq. It did not do anything for our troops in Iraq, but what a guy. story.news.yahoo.com

To: aladin who wrote (112862)	8/26/2003 10:30:00 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

John: Wesley Clark has a very distinguished military record... Born: 23 December 1944 Place of Birth: Little Rock, Arkansas Military University: West Point Military Decorations: - Defense Distinguished Service Medal (three awards) - Distinguished Service Medal - Silver Star - Legion of Merit (four awards) - Bronze Star Medal (two awards) - Purple Heart - Meritorious Service Medal (two awards) - Army Commendation Medal (two awards) Wars Fought: -Vietnam -Kosovo Kosovo War: General Clark led a state of the art campaign in Kosovo despite so many critics saying airpower will not do the job. General Clark also showed a lot of heart and guts in an incident after the war was over. He knew that the Russians would try to take the Pristina airport and he ordered a British General to send some of his troops along with elite US Rangers to take the airport before the Russians get there. The British General however was scared this could lead to a confrontation with the Russians and he refused to obey orders. It is because of this incident General Clark resigned shortly after this took place. On March 30th, 2000, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark, has been awarded an honorary knighthood by Britain's Queen Elizabeth in recognition of his role in the Balkans. geocities.com This is who the General is. Somehow I don't see GW Bush doing something like this.... <<..."In August 1995, the general—three stars, working as J-5 for the Joint Chiefs—went to Bosnia as part of the negotiating team Ambassador Richard Holbrooke had put together to end the civil war that had resulted in the massacre of as many as eight thousand Muslim men and boys at the town of Srebrenica the month before. In Belgrade, Clark had met for the first time Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, who was sponsoring the Bosnian Serbs. Now the team had to travel to Sarajevo. Told that the airport in Sarajevo was too dangerous to fly into, the team decided to drive and asked Milosevic to guarantee its safety on a road held by Bosnian Serbs. Milosevic did not, and so the team wound up taking a fortified Humvee and an armored personnel carrier on a pitched, narrow, winding mountain road notoriously vulnerable to Serb machine-gun fire. Clark and Holbrooke went in the Humvee, the rest in the APC. In his book, the general describes what happened this way: "At the end of the first week we had a tragic accident on Mount Igman, near Sarajevo. [Three members of the team] were killed when the French armored personnel carrier in which they were riding broke through the shoulder of the road and tumbled several hundred meters down a steep hillside." It is not until one reads Holbrooke's book, To End a War, that one finds out that after the APC went off the road, Clark grabbed a rope, anchored it to a tree stump, and rappelled down the mountainside after it, despite the gunfire that the explosion of the APC set off, despite the warnings that the mountainside was heavily mined, despite the rain and the mud, and despite Holbrooke yelling that he couldn't go. It is not until one brings the incident up to the general that one finds out that the burning APC had turned into a kiln, and that Clark stayed with it and aided in the extraction of the bodies; it is not until one meets Wesley Clark that one understands the degree to which he held Milosevic accountable."...>> -From the August issue of Esquire magazine ___________ Here's a balanced review of why Clark may have been relieved from his duties in Europe...there are many interpretations of what was driving the decision made by Secretary of Defense Cohen... fas.org <<...Retired Colonel David Hackworth - a decorated U-S veteran from the Korean and Vietnam wars - says General Clark has not received the necessary accolades for his Kosovo campaign. /// HACKWORTH ACT /// He is a winner. He is the first General in U-S military history who fought a war, sustained - as we know - no friendly casualties and at the end of the war didn't get a bunch of medals, didn't get a victory parade down (New York's) Fifth Avenue and ended up getting the sack. (getting fired) /// END ACT /// Colonel Hackworth - now a military analyst - is referring to U-S Defense Secretary William Cohen's decision to replace General Clark as Supreme NATO Commander in April of next year - three months before his three-year term expires...>> <<...Many analysts and military experts agree with Colonel Hackworth's assessment. And the question they are asking is why was General Clark fired? One interpretation is that General Clark advocated a much more vigorous military campaign against Serb forces in Kosovo including the introduction of ground forces. Retired Colonel Dan Smith - a West Point classmate of General Clark - says the NATO Commander believes the only way you can achieve success militarily, is to have troops on the ground. /// CLARK ACT /// He is of the school which in the United States is generally attributed to General Colin Powell: if you are going to fight, you go in with both feet and you go in fast and you go in hard with overwhelming force - and I think that was what Wes was trying to push NATO into...>> _________________________ I have researched Wesley Clark extensively and have taken 'a close look at the General.' IMO, he still may be the best candidate for President in 2004. -s2@WeCouldReallyUseaRealWarHeroAsPresident.com

To: aladin who wrote (112862)	8/26/2003 10:46:47 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Re: Take a closer look at the General. You're right! General Clark's Jewish background might impair his wisdom in dealing with the Israel-Palestine crisis.... THE GENERAL. His Family's Refugee Past Is Said to Inspire NATO's Commander, by Elizabeth Becker, New York Times, May 3, 1999 "The American general who is leading NATO's military operation to stop Serbian troops from killing and expelling Albanians from Kosovo discovered as an adult that he is the grandson of a Russian Jew who fled his country to escape the pogroms there a century ago. Gen. Wesley Kanne Clark was raised as a Protestant in Little Rock, Ark., where he was brought up by his mother and stepfather, Victor Clark. He was ignorant of his ancestry, which disappeared from his life with the death of his father, Benjamin Jacob Kanne when Wesley was 5 years old. He learned of his ethnic background when he was in his 20's and embraced the discovery, according to several family members. Since President Slobodan Milosovic of Yugoslavia began the forced exodus of Albanians from Kosovo, many have drawn parallels with the expulsion of Jews from Russia and the Nazi mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust in Europe. General Clark has not discussed his heritage with many people, sharing his belated discovery of his biological father's family and background with only a few close friends and his immediate family. He declined to be interviewed for this article. But in interviews, some of his relatives and friends say that General Clark was inspired by the story of his grandfather's persecution and escape from his native land, and that his determination to defeat Milosevic is fed in part by his empathy for the victims of Serbian ethnic purges. After he was married, while studying at Oxford from 1966 to 1968, Wesley Clark was contacted by his father's relatives and gradually became aware of who his father and grandparents were. Soon after, he met some of the members of his lost family. He then slowly became part of the Kanne family, beginning with the initial phone call from a cousin in the late 1960's and culminating with an invitation to his first cousin Barry Kanne to spend a quiet New Year dinner with him in Belgium this year. General Clark also has become fluent in the Russian language and in the past three years has delved into the family history ... In the late 1890's, Jacob Nemerovsky, the general's grandfather, fled Russia in fear for his life during one of the episodic pogroms against Jews. According to the family, Nemerovsky found safety in Switzerland where he obtained a false passport under the family name of Kanne, which he used to immigrate to the United States. "Wes and I talked about his family once on a military plane to Bosnia," said Richard C. Holbrooke, the negotiator of the Dayton peace plan. 'I told him how my wife discovered she was Jewish in her 30's and he said, 'That's funny, I have a sort of similar story.'' (Another Clinton Administration official, Madeleine K. Albright, learned only after she was nominated as Secretary of State that her grandparents had died in concentration camps during the Holocaust.)" ___________________________________