Wes Clark: Bush, Powell, Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld a "great team...we need them there"

9/11 changed everything.

 

If that's true, watch his poll number drop.

 

If a person's world view can be changed so easily, so quickly, or in order to get elected one goes on to say anything that pleases, then something is fishy.

Credibility is built with consistency.

 

So, Bush killing the funding for anything related to abortion is consistant.

It was part of his platform.

 

Let me get this straight...when the Republicans say "9/11 changed everything", its okay, just as long as it serves their agenda? But when anyone else uses it, they're wrong because they're not consistent??? Since when did the GOP reserve the right to monopolyze the use of 9/11?

G.W. Bush and Colin Powell both thought Sadaam Hussein didn't pose a threat pre-9/11, that the U.S. should not be the policeman of the world nor into nation builiding, then changed their view post 9/11 into pre-emptive wars and "roadmaps" for the "axis of evil".

Clark, who never identified himself as either republican or democrat pre-9/11(something that military men have to consider, since they are obligated to carry out the orders of the commander-in-chief...who surprise surprise, can be from either party) decides to run post-9/11 for president for the opposition party because he is disappointed in the way the country is going.

Now you tell me whose done more of the 180 degree turn here. (and more importantly, has affected more lives with the consequences of that change).

 

Dan, while this may be true, i just think it's unfair of you to play that card. Whenever the righties say this, you pretend like 9/11 didn't alter anything. But when it saves Wes from looking stupid its ok to use?

In all fairness, Wes may have changed his mind since then, but please remember that you said "9/11 changed everything." It did for a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum.

 

what's this about Gen Shelton, fmr jts chf stf, sniping Clark in the press, saying he left Europe w/ personal problems & wouldn't vote for him. That's highly irregular 4 the ranks to insult ea other, even after they've retired, in public forum and it lacks chivalry. I saw it late last ight on the 700club & then again this morning on Foxnews--hey I have a really esoteric sense of humor.

 

Did he include the whole quote? (I don't know, he's on my ignore list.)

HOLT: Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, two names we associate with the Gulf War, now in big leadership positions. Do you think that will change, create more tension, perhaps bring the coalition as we knew it back together?

CLARK: Well, I think that we've got a very effective foreign policy team in this administration. I think they're going to do the right things.

But I think they're going to have to go into the Middle East, work with the allies there, go through the Persian Gulf and talk to people and get their feet on the ground first before they start making major moves.

************

To me, the picture is pretty clear. He gave them the benefit of the doubt. But they failed to "work with the allies there, go through the Persian Gulf and talk to people and get their feet on the ground first before they start making major moves."

 

Which is pretty much where I was at, too. But the GOP team cocked it up, and we've got soldiers dying as a result. Not that Ian gives a damn about them.

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You can smell the fear with the GOP, can't you?

 

And people should be allowed to change their minds based on performance. Colin Powell, up until the Iraq War, the UN fiasco, etc... was well regarded across the nation. After all that has happened, I doubt he is held in such high esteem. People can change their minds, and Wes Clark is no exception.

Obviously, people who oppose Clark will just say that he is doing the politically expedient thing by changing his views now, but there are millions across America who have changed their views of this administration since the Iraq War. Just look at the recent approval ratings on Bush.

It's asinine to expect someone to be absolutely consistent in all of their views. That implies that someone will not change their mind when given new information that contradicts their previous viewpoint. I would prefer someone who was able to think and adapt to new information as opposed to clinging to an archane viewpoint for the sake of "consistency".

 

Uh, yeah, exactly. I'm sick of people trotting out this line whenever someone brings up an inconvenient fact from the past, or tries to justify the Iraq debacle.

9/11 has absolutely nothing to do with what Clark said (well, in theory he could say something like "I thought Bush was competent until he let 9/11 happen," but that doesn't sound like the Wesleyan). But 9/11 has nothing to do with Iraq, either, and I have to hear that crap from my alleged representatives all the damn time.

In the interests of accuracy, I should have said "The Iraq War changed everything," because that's probably what changed a lot of people's minds about the Bush team. But that wasn't the point I was trying to make - I wasn't trying to defend Clark, who's a big boy and can speak for himself. (Uh, although I doubt the effin' 700 Club is going to give him equal time.)

 

You know that Lincoln Day Dinner is the Republican Party's annual fundraiser: a $$($$) a plate, part political pep rally, part social event. And why Clark was there?

Red flag.

 

I have to admit that footage of Clark praising the Bush team in May 2001 should be a bit disturbing for the Democratic left.

But many Democrats are not 'hardcore' lefties -- and certainly most Americans aren't.

More to the point, we already know that Clark voted for Nixon, Reagan and Bush I. And what military officer would deny that Reagan was good for the military? Anyone can see that. Even a leftie can see that he also likely helped hasten the fall of communism. Whether he was good for a whole lot of other things is another question.

From '92 on, Clark voted Democrat.

Even so, what's wrong with a patriotic retired U.S. general praising (with caveats, as superdave points out) a new presidential administration's foreign policy team that was yet untested in the waters of high diplomacy and statecraft. Besides, it's true that Powell and Co. did have loads of experience on paper.

But once they were tested, well, that DID change everything.

Tell the allies to fvck off. Unilaterally pull out of several major international treaties in a fit of hubris unheard of in modern politics. Blow off involvoing NATO (a huge mistake for Clark) in the war on terror (he's written wonderful stuff about this) or in Afghanistan (despite NATO invoking Art. 5 for first time in history). Tell the allies to fvck off again on Iraq and wage America's first-ever unilateral war based arrogance and on shoddy intelligence, in the process undermining the collective security system that have kept the peace and prosperity for 60 years. Tell the UN to fvck off. Slash taxes for the rich as the middle and lower classes lose millions of jobs. Greatly expand the pork-lined military budget, including major contracts of the $3,000 toilet seat variety to the Halliburtons of the world (See today's Wash Post front page: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2213-2003Sep25.html). Offer Americans, before the war, no clear price tag or even vague estimate for the Iraq reconstruction or any exit strategy while American soldiers and others are dying by the day and terrorism is flowering like flies on sh!t, then come back pleading for 87 billion from the American people and troops from the same international community it told to fvck off-- only to get slapped in the face by the UN and perhaps in the end by Congress, who are sick of it all.

Need I go on?

Gen. Clark is hardly the only one shocked by the radical incompetence of this administration -- and doing everything in his power to boot them from office before they launch the next 'vital preemptive war' to save us from certain annihilation.

 

Sure. like Al Sharpton said in last night's debate, "It's better to be a new Democrat that's a real Democrat, than a lot of old Democrats up here that have been acting like Republicans all along."

 

I can't. That's what worries me.