Wesley Clark defends low-income cell phone program during speech in Baton Rouge. +ISIS.
Clark, a former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and 2004 Democratic candidate for president, also touched on ISIS during his visit to Baton Rouge. He said the region is sorting out 300 years of disagreement among schools of Islamic thought, which couldn't be solved by putting American troops back on the ground in Iraq.
"We tried to put democracy in Iraq but we failed," Clark said. "Without legitimate governance in the region, all the boots on the ground won't make a difference, just like they didn't in Iraq and just like they haven't in Afghanistan."
http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/11/wesley_clark_defends_low-incom.html
delrem
(9,688 posts)And americans still pretend to believe it?
That's pretty damn shameless.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)delrem
(9,688 posts)Next time use more bombs, kill more Iraqis, arm more militias, firebomb more cities. Since that's how "democracy" is spread, according as you and Wes.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)delrem
(9,688 posts)Sheee.....
Wes Clark has said, forever, that is NOT how democracy is spread. Did you read his statement?
"Without legitimate governance in the region, all the boots on the ground won't make a difference, just like they didn't in Iraq and just like they haven't in Afghanistan."
delrem
(9,688 posts)And he blamed it on the intransigent Muslims
elleng
(130,912 posts)which couldn't be solved by putting American troops back on the ground in Iraq.'
delrem
(9,688 posts)for freedom, and it failed because Muslims are backward.
And that is a flat out lie. The Iraq war had nothing to do with noble purposes, however "mistaken".
I suppose that you think the US war on Syria is "for democracy"?
elleng
(130,912 posts)As to 'backwards,' he appears to understand the cause of the long-term antagonism among Muslims, '300 years of disagreement,' and he does not refer to anyone as 'backwards.'
delrem
(9,688 posts)To say it was is to utter a flat out lie.
That he uttered the lie doesn't contradict the fact that he undoubtedly knows the truth, just as you do.
To be sure, americans might *feel better* about themselves by believing that lie, so when the lie is told often enough by both political parties will tend to believe it and to repeat it and totally forget the actual facts of the matter, but that doesn't make the lie into a truth. On the contrary, it makes the US's mass slaughter of Iraqi citizens all the more awful. These continual lies and denials make the continuing US bombings, mercenary proxy wars, regime changes, etc., in the ME absolutely *creepy*.
elleng
(130,912 posts)passage in Wesley Clarks new memoir suggests that another war is part of a long-planned Department of Defense strategy that anticipated regime change by force in no fewer than seven Mideast states. Critics of the war have often voiced suspicions of such imperial schemes, but this is the first time that a high-ranking former military officer has claimed to know that such plans existed.
The existence of that classified memo would certainly cast more dubious light not only on the original decision to invade Iraq because of Saddam Husseins weapons and ambitions but on the current efforts to justify and even instigate military action against Iran.
In A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country, published by Palgrave Macmillan last month, the former four-star general recalls two visits to the Pentagon following the terrorist attacks of September 2001. On the first visit, less than two weeks after Sept. 11, he writes, a senior general told him, Were going to attack Iraq. The decision has basically been made.
Six weeks later, Clark returned to Washington to see the same general and inquired whether the plan to strike Iraq was still under consideration. The generals response was stunning:
Oh, its worse than that, he said, holding up a memo on his desk. Heres the paper from the Office of the Secretary of Defense [then Donald Rumsfeld] outlining the strategy. Were going to take out seven countries in five years. And he named them, starting with Iraq and Syria and ending with Iran.
While Clark doesnt name the other four countries, he has mentioned in televised interviews that the hit list included Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan. Indeed, he has described this same conversation on a few occasions over the past year, including in a speech at the University of Alabama in October 2006, in an appearance on Amy Goodmans Democracy Now broadcast last March, and most recently in an interview with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room. On Democracy Now he spoke about the meetings and the memo in slightly greater detail, saying that he had made the first Pentagon visit on or about Sept. 20.
Clark says he didnt read the memo from Rumsfelds office. When the general first held it up, he remembers asking, Is it classified? Receiving an affirmative answer, he said, Well, dont show it to me. He also says that when he saw the same general last year and reminded him of their conversation, the officer said, Sir, I didnt show you that memo! I didnt show it to you!
During the Blitzer interview, Clark backed off slightly, conceding that the memo wasnt [necessarily] a plan. Maybe it was a think piece. Maybe it was a sort of notional concept, but what it was, was the kind of indication of dialogue around this town in official circles
that has poisoned the atmosphere and made it very difficult for this administration to achieve any success in the region.'
http://www.salon.com/2007/10/12/wesley_clark/
delrem
(9,688 posts)Not even "superficially" true.
Seems that the PNAC plan is still going strong, too.
Legalequilibrium78
(103 posts)or you are purposely being obtuse, to keep inferring something completely opposite to what Gen.Wesley Clark said. I swear sometimes some people on this site are just completely unhinge and here I thought Liberals are supposed to be smart and have a fine reading comprehension, I guess not.
elleng
(130,912 posts)delrem
(9,688 posts)"We tried to put democracy in Iraq but we failed," he said.
Legalequilibrium78
(103 posts)by us the American people. You may not like the results of that election and as Pres.Bush being the president who presided that nonsense, but he was re-elected in 2004 by our friends, neighbours, and yes families. One more time sir or maam, quit being a yammering idiot.
elleng
(130,912 posts)and WELCOME!
Legalequilibrium78
(103 posts)but you are WELCOME Do you mean to say you are a lawyer? Thanks for welcoming me again.
elleng
(130,912 posts)Yes, I'm a lawyer, retired, worked at ICC for 20+ years, regulated rail mergers. Always happy to see one of us setting the record straight!
delrem
(9,688 posts)quadrature
(2,049 posts)they don't want democracy.
they want their tribe to be
on the winning side.