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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (24621)	1/16/2004 1:08:56 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793717

The further we get from 911, the more they will try to stop us from completing the task. Tough years ahead. Agreed. Andrew Sullivan has some very good comments on today's what-was-Clark's-position-on-Iraq-and-when fracas: Reading Clark's remarks, several things stand out. First, like everyone else, he believed that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons. Second, he believed that war should be an option, in fact, war should be clearly threatened by the United States: I think it's not yet time to use force against Iraq but it is certainly time to put that card on the table, to turn it face up and to wave it and the president is doing that and I think that the United States Congress has to indicate after due consideration and consulting our people and building our resolve that yes, this is a significant security problem for the United States of America and all options are on the table including the use of force as necessary to solve this problem because I think that's what's required to leverage any hope of solving this problem short of war. I fail to see how that was in the slightest bit different than the Bush-Blair position. Clark emphasized the benefits of a broad coalition and U.N. support. In September, he cautioned patience and time: I think you have to balance risks and I think that in balancing the risks it's better to take the time now to line up as strong as possible diplomatic support and a military coalition before you have to take what looks like will probably be inevitable action, rather than rushing into something on the presumption that your intelligence is faulty ... (By faulty, he meant intelligence that was under-estimating Saddam's weaponry.) Again, his position is identical to Bush-Blair. They spent much of the fall and winter of 2002 desperately trying to win over as much support as possible - but France was never, repeat never, going to budge. What about unilateralism? Here's Clark's answer: I think the first thing is you have a very strong determination that's out in public and supported by this body that says if we don't get the assistance we need from the United Nations, as a last resort we will use force and we will solve the problem ourselves. We also learn that Clark absolutely believed that there was a real chance of an al Qaeda-Saddam link, and that it was prudent to assume it had or would occur. The difference is that in the real world, we couldn't get universal agreement; we had to make a difficult judgment about the threat; and so an easy decision was impossible. As soon as it got tough, Clark bailed, then, during and immediately after the war, praised the president and the allies, then bailed again. No wonder Marshall likes him. All this careful positioning, demands for a perfect world, support for threatening war as long as we would never actually deliver: classic Clintonian foreign policy. I guess you could defend it. But whatever defense you make of it cannot be that Clark was simply anti-war. He was pro-war until it was politically convenient for him not to be. He was pro-war, depending on what the meaning of "pro" is. All this is from a man who is now campaigning as Howard Dean with medals. The man is a colossal phony. www.andrewsullivan.com