Here is a 'picture worth a thousand words' why Clark...

Democratic presidential hopeful Wesley Clark, right, embraces filmmaker Michael Moore during a campaign rally at Pembroke Academy in Pembroke, N.H. Saturday, Jan. 17, 2004. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All right reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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because he can prescribe his own uniform but i have seen enlisted personnel and low ranking (read 2d lieutenants) officers disciplined for mixing uniforms.

You better tell everyone I was NOT that friend!!! hehehe

Glenda

and he's now picked Kerry?

It was odd to say the least. I know this is purely visual, but even if Clark was more viable as a Veep candidate, a Kerry/Clark ticket would be strange. Kerry towers over Clark by quite a few inches -- something odd about that imagery given their military ranks.

Clark praised Kerry for his leadership. Tell us Wesley, what major piece of legislation has Kerry taken the helm on in the past 18 years in the Senate? Tell us General, what leadership did Kerry demonstrate leading up to and with all his flip-flops regarding the Iraq war?

Evie

... I expected someone to bring up this picture, just didn't think it would be you!

Let's see, Rumsfeld in 1983 on a diplomatic mission shakes hands with Saddam. This was five years before he gassed the Kurds, and I'm sure we could find lots of pictures of envoys shaking hands with tyrants pre-atrocities throughout history. Why Clinton even had Arafat to the White House ..... oops, that would be post atrocities, but Arafat isn't a terrorist anymore right? But I digress ...

Quite different than Clark meeting with Mladic, against State Department policy, at a time when Mladic was ALREADY suspected of war crimes (the reason we went there as I recall, and for which he is now still wanted!). The exchange of hats, gifts and swigs seems most unGeneral-like, not to mention fitting for a man who would be Commander in Chief.

I never understood those who backed Clark based on his military record. It's hardly a stellar point on his resume that in the end he was fired by Clinton!

Evie

He had already used gas against the Iranians in the war against Iran and used WMD's from the USA!

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You posted a correction that was appropriate.

Wheaton, Md.: I hear pro-Saddam activists often claim that Reagan supplied Hussein with chemical weapons. I've seen no evidence to support these claims. Is there any truth to this?

Joyce Battle: I have not personally seen documents that indicate that the Reagan administration supplied Iraq with chemical weapons.

In 1983, Iranian claims that Saddam was using WMD might well have held as much water as those of the Palestinians regarding massacres, complete with footage of "corpses" getting up and walking away when they fall off the cart in a staged funeral. One has to wonder where the UN was during that whole time ......

I have seen confirmation that he used them in 1984, but not prior ... at least it was not known in 1983.

A link for you: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/iran-iraq.htm

You can play revisionist history all you want. Saddam was a secular leader in a region with radical Islam on the rise. Oh, and Iran was pretty fresh off that little hostage thing. Did Reagan make some mistakes in foreign policy? Undoubtably. Unfortunately we can't predict what enemies or even allies are capable of, or when an ally will turn to enemy. If you read the link, you'll see that our (former?) ally, France, was aiding Saddam as well. The righteous French and Russians have much more to answer for in terms of what they did with Saddam post Kuwait

IAC, this Rumsfeld picture would be akin to a picture of Holbrooke shaking Milosevic's hand during pre-war negotiations. That's a far cry from Clark's defiance of the State Department in cavorting with Mladic who was already suspected of war crimes.

Five years before he gassed the Kurds but only he was already using mustard gas on the Iranians.

Guess where he probably got the mustard gas?

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

The U.S., having decided that an Iranian victory would not serve its interests, began supporting Iraq: measures already underway to upgrade U.S.-Iraq relations were accelerated, high-level officials exchanged visits, and in February 1982 the State Department removed Iraq from its list of states supporting international terrorism.

Way to go, President Reagan!

(continued...)

Where did he get the mustard gas, Josh? Allow me to repeat a portion of an analysis done for the U.N.:
"The UN report provides only negative evidence of the origin of the mustard gas sample. The absence in the sample analysed in Sweden and Switzerland of polysulphides and of more than a trace of sulphur indicates that it is not of past US-government manufacture, for all US mustard was made by the Levinstein process from ethylene and mixed sulphur chlorides. That process is also said to have been the one used by the USSR. From similar reasoning, British-made mustard, too, can probably be ruled out, even though substantial stocks were once held at British depots in the Middle East.".

A diplomatic envoy shaking hands with Saddam at that stage of the complex Iran-Iraq conflict hardly equates with a General (don't recall how many stars he had at the time) cavorting with a Serb General against the advice of our State Dept. and whose suspected crimes were part of the impetus for us going to war in the first place! Can you see the difference?

We have given Israel quite a bit of aid as well, which I support. But honestly Josh, can we ever be sure that at some point Israel might not use that inappropriately?

Evie

It's not all hindsight, Evie. Saddam was using WMD on people at the time that photo was taken, and we had to have known it. The Administration made choices. IMO some of them weren't very good ones. We were arming both sides in that war. Maybe Reagan was hoping they'd all kill each other, who knows.

Hi Josh,

Had posted a reply the other day, but guess I didn't hit the right button or it went into cyberspace as has happened before.

Anyway, I read your entire link and then did a little fishing as to who Joyce Battle was. From the discussion at this link, it seems that Battle is certainly someone with an agenda, something to keep in mind when one reads her collection of exerpts from documents. Exerpts that surely were selected to shed the Reagan era approach to Iran-Iraq in the worst possible light.

It seems that it would be fair to say that the Administration knew at the time of the Rumsfeld photo that there were allegations of Saddam using chemical weapons. Allegations, by the Iranians. Is it possible that the allegations were not given much credence because of the source. We've had examples recently -- Jenin Massacre! -- that demonstrate not all allegations are true. More relevant to Clark, the allegations he was acting against were taken seriously and hyped. Remember the thousands in mass graves that was indisputably the impetus for that preemptive war? (As it turned out the Trebka tale and others have been proven false as no real "mass graves" were ever found) Clark had been advised NOT to visit with this general who was already considered a possible war criminal. That is extremely poor judgement.

Rumsfeld was on an official negotiating mission. At the time Saddam had not been proven to use chemical weapons. Battle herself admits there is no evidence that the US ever supplied Saddam with any WMD. His visit was at a time when Iran was surging into Iraq and Saddam represented a secular regime in the face of advancing Islamic extremism. That's why I mention hindsight, because if one takes that photo and what evidence there was of Saddam's use of WMD back in '83 out of the context of everything else, it is easy to find that photo damning. But when one considers all the facts and circumstances of the times there is absolutely nothing different between that photo and one of Clark if he were to be shaking Milosevic's hand at Dayton. But Clark's photo, taken fully in context with the circumstances is more damning.

Evie

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might have smiled and shaken your hand too Charlie---what's your point?

Clark had been instructed to NOT make the visit and Rummy had been instructed TO make the visit because we still maintained diplomatic relations with Saddam at the time.

Should we bring up photos of JFK and Nikita? They were on the same order as Rummy and Saddam rather than Clark and Mladic. That was CLINTON'S State Department that found it disturbing and that Clark ignored you might want to note.

As I recall, he ordered a British commander to attack the Russians. The Brit refused. Poor judgement. That's what the picture shows. I think Clinton promoted him with all the implications that that has. As I recall, his departure from active duty was not something to be proud of.

At the very end of the war, after Slobodan Milosevic finally gave up under withering NATO bombing, Russia demanded that they control a section of Kosovo, though they weren't (then) in NATO. (Russia has traditionally been a close ally of the Serbians, whose attacks on Albanians in Kosovo triggered this war, and Albanians rightly feared living under a Russian controlled, pro-Serbian government.) Clark flatly refused any Russian control, and -- despite promising not to -- the Russians sent 200 troops to take over Kosovo's main airport, as a power play.

Clark, who had negotiated with Milovic, Serbia and Russia in the Dayton Peace Accords, was determined not to let that ploy work. With the approval of Javier Solana, the NATO leader, he ordered British troops to occupy the other end of the airport -- where there were few if any Russian troops -- and prevent Russia from flying in more troops to build up their presence. British general Michael Jackson refused in a way Clark called "emotional".

Reminds me of the Eisenhower/Montgomery set-tos.

Politics plays a role in all conflicts.

Angline
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