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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: d.taggart who wrote (508969)	12/13/2003 10:36:20 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769667

Clark didn't fare much better: CAMERON: General Clark, your campaign implies that your combat experience gives you a better understanding of the implications of war, but your political message is confusing. You have not only praised the president that you now want to defeat but, according to the Arab Institute Voting Guide, in February of 2003, you said this, quote: "Saddam Hussein has these weapons, and so, you know, we're going to go ahead and do this, and the rest of the world has got to get with us," unquote. But you have also so far refused to take a firm position on the president's request for more money. Can you tell us exactly where you do stand? CLARK: I'd be happy to tell you where I stand. I think I've been very consistent from the beginning. Right after 9/11, this administration determined to do bait and switch on the American public. President Bush said he was going to get Osama bin Laden, dead or alive. Instead, he went after Saddam Hussein. He doesn't have either one of them today. The compression of ideas in that last statement by General Clark speaks volumes about the Democratic Party's approach to foreign policy and the war on terror. Clark implies that the Bush team deliberately switched attention away from Afghanistan in order to go after Iraq--"right after 9/11." But the months after 9/11 were consumed with the war against the Taliban, a war successfully implemented with minimal casualties. There was no "bait-and-switch" "right after 9/11." Why would the Bush team want to focus on Iraq because they hadn't found Osama bin Laden when they didn't know at the time that they wouldn't find and eliminate bin Laden? It makes no sense. In fact, the war against Iraq was designed to complement the war against the Taliban, to show that the United States would no longer tolerate the possible nexus of terrorists with outlaw regimes building WMDs. You may disagree with that policy, but to argue it was a cynical "bait and switch" deal makes a mockery of history. So too is the simplistic notion that the war on terror was a simple attempt to get rid of two men--Saddam and OBL--rather than two dangerous regimes in Kabul and Baghdad. But the administration has accomplished both objectives, while still obviously struggling to win the fragile peace in both countries, a peace that Kerry and Clark refuse to finance. CLARK: I've been against this war from the beginning. I was against it last summer, I was against it in the fall, I was against it in the winter, I was against it in the spring. And I'm against it now. It was an unnecessary war. There was no imminent threat. No member of the administration used the term "imminent threat" to describe Saddam Hussein's Iraq. No one. In his 2003 State of the Union, the president based his argument for war on the notion that we should not wait until the threat is imminent before we take measures to defend ourselves. Clark is repeating a lie that has been thoroughly exposed on the Internet and elsewhere, a lie that even The New York Times has stopped repeating. CLARK: On the other hand, just like Reverend Sharpton said, Bush got all our--the president got all of our troops out there, got them poised, committed the United States to this thing. What he didn't do was he didn't use diplomacy. He didn't use leadership. He didn't bring the rest of the world with it. He should've. There was time to do it. There was no imminent threat. And there is no excuse for his failure of leadership. Clark's criterion seems to be that no war can ever be waged by the United States unless the entire rest of the planet is in agreement. Is this his real position? If so, he needs to say so candidly. It amounts to giving the French and Russians a veto over American foreign policy, in an era after war has been declared on the United States by radical Islam. Watching this debate only confirms the wisdom of Donna Brazile's comments to the Associated Press over the weekend: "There's a huge credibility gap our party has on national security--not because we don't have enough military medals, but because we have no plan of action." Amen. tnr.com Andrew Sullivan is a senior editor at TNR.