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92nd St Y, New York City
Tue, Feb 27, 2007 - 8:00pm
Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street
Kaufmann Concert Hall
Price: $25.00 All Sections
Gen. Wesley K. Clark on War:
Past, Present and Future
Tickets are available for purchase by calling (212) 415-5500.
You may also purchase tickets on-line at their website.
Wesley Clark To Host Conference On National Security March 6-7, 2007.
Wesley Clark will host the inaugural conference on national security of the UCLA Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations on March 6-7, 2007. The conference will "explore the emerging challenges of nuclear weapons in the 21st century".
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Fox - Your World - 12/28/06
Fox News Sunday - The execution of Saddam - 12/31/06
Bloomberg TV - Money and Politics - Host Peter Cook with Wes - 1/02/07
Meet Wes Clark
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MYTH 1:
Contrary to what you have may have read in the mainstream media, General Clark never claimed to have received a call from the White House asking him to link September 11 to Iraq.
The story really began rolling when the Weekly Standard ran back to back pieces attacking Clark with what they obviously hoped to make the standard narrative about the General. The August 25 issue of the magazine accuses Clark of putting forth "three versions" of a story that he received a call at his home the afternoon of September 11, 2001, urging him to say on CNN that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were connected to Iraq. The charge is repeated in a story in the magazine's September 1-8 issue.
Before deconstructing the Standard's spin, it is worth noting that the substance of the story, that Bush administration officials were hard at work trying to establish just such a connection within hours of the attacks, is true. As reported by ABC news, "barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq - even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks."
So, did Clark give "three versions" of the story? Of course not. If you read the just the quotes in the Standard, instead of their spin, that much is obvious. Let's review. The Standard begins by pointing out that on "Meet the Press" on June 15 of this year (12:37 into clip), Clark noted that intelligence about the Iraqi threat had been hyped. (While Bush himself has essentially conceded this point, the Standard apparently has not.) The magazine quotes the exchange.
"Hyped by whom?" asked moderator Tim Russert.
CLARK: "I think it was an effort to convince the American people to do something, and I think there was an immediate determination right after 9/11 that Saddam Hussein was one of the keys to winning the war on terror. Whether it was the need just to strike out or whether he was a linchpin in this, there was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001 starting immediately after 9/11 to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein."
RUSSERT: "By who? Who did that?"
CLARK: "Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You've got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.' I said, 'But--I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?' And I never got any evidence. And these were people who had--Middle East think tanks and people like this, and it was a lot of pressure to connect this and there were a lot of assumptions made. But I never personally saw the evidence and didn't talk to anybody who had the evidence to make that connection."
Note that while Clark says that the White House was asserting there was a linkage between 9/11 and Iraq, he does NOT say that he got the call from the White House asking him to affirm that linkage. Instead, he says the call was from "Middle Eastern think tanks and people like this." As we will see, that is Clark's story, and he sticks to it.
The next time Clark addresses the point it is two weeks later, when he is accosted by Faux News' Sean Hannity. Again, the Standard faithfully printed the exchange. (Quoting directly from the Standard) "Referring to the Russert transcript above, Hannity said of the call, "I think you owe it to the American people to tell us who."
Clark replied, "It came from many different sources, Sean."
HANNITY: "Who? Who?"
CLARK : "And I personally got a call from a fellow in Canada who is part of a Middle Eastern think tank who gets inside intelligence information. He called me on 9/11."
HANNITY: "That's not the answer. Who in the White House?"
CLARK: "I'm not going to go into those sources."
Unless you are an editor at the Weekly Standard, the substance of this second exchange is entirely consistent with the first. Clark again says there were "many sources" for the story that the White House wanted to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11. Clark repeats his prior claim that he himself was called by someone who was part of a Middle Eastern think tank. He is a bit more specific, allowing that the call came from Canada, but he clearly does NOT claim that the call came from the White House. When pressed on his sources who are in the White House, he refuses to identify them. Two right wing talking heads, Hannity and Russert, have now been given the same version of events by Clark. But in the pages edited by Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes, Clark has somehow changed his tune.
The water then gets muddied a bit. Three days later, in his usually unassailable New York Times column, Paul Krugman makes an uncharacteristic mistake. He states:
"Literally before the dust had settled, Bush administration officials began trying to use 9/11 to justify an attack on Iraq. Gen. Wesley Clark says that he received calls on Sept. 11 from 'people around the White House' urging him to link the attack to Saddam Hussein."
Krugman has clearly mischaracterized Clark's prior remarks. As shown by the transcripts published in the Weekly Standard, Clark did NOT say that "people around the White House' [were] urging him to link the attack to Saddam Hussein." On two separate occasions, Clark had identified these people as members of "Middle Eastern think tanks." How did General Clark respond to Krugman's column? By writing this letter to the Times:
"I would like to correct any possible misunderstanding of my remarks on 'Meet the Press,' quoted in Paul Krugman's July 15 column, about 'people around the White House' seeking to link Sept. 11 to Saddam Hussein.
I received a call from a Middle East think tank outside the country, asking me to link 9/11 to Saddam Hussein. No one from the White House asked me to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11. Subsequently, I learned that there was much discussion inside the administration in the days immediately after Sept. 11 trying to use 9/11 to go after Saddam Hussein.
In other words, there were many people, inside and outside the government, who tried to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11.
WESLEY K. CLARK Little Rock, Ark., July 18, 2003"
Thus, not only had Clark been entirely consistent in identifying the source of the call in his public statements, when he became aware that his assertion had been mischaracterized in the press, he took the time to correct the record. For the third time, Clark said the exact same thing.
Despite the fact that Clark never said that he was called by the White House, and the fact that he clearly corrected the record in the New York Times, the Weekly Standard and their cohorts in the mainstream press know a talking point when they see it. The false accusation has now taken on a life of its own, and has been repeated at least in the following places:
SOURCE: Clarkmyths.com which is no longer online.