Obama to General Wesley Clark: Your Services Not Needed
General Wesley Clark is not attending the Democratic National Convention. I was told by General Clark's personal office in Little Rock that he would not be attending.
Clark was informed by Barack Obama's people that there was no reason to come.
General Clark has been given no role of any kind at the convention.
Rubbing salt in the wound even more, the "theme" of Wednesday's Democratic convention agenda is "Securing America."
Wesley Clark's PAC also happens to be called SECURING AMERICA.
carries Misha Glenny's intriguing geopolitical piece on Russia's invasion of Georgia:
GEORGIA IN THE MIDDLE
The Russians set a trap, and prodded by the neo-cons, Saakashvili walked right in.
Apparently Dick Cheney's meddling in Georgian affairs is driven in part by his desire to influence our November election and to turn it away from a mandate on who could best serve our economic woes to who is perceived as most ready to deal with national security issues.
Barack Obama is the leader of a generation. Our country is at a critical crossroads - a constitutional crisis; a climate crisis ; a geopolitical end game; an economic turning point - the decisions made by the next administration will be decisive on whether we continue on a downward spiral or belief can be restored in our highest principles and the possibility of a sustainable future.
The next administration faces an enormous test of crisis management.
Dear General Clark. You analyze the available data free of ideological spin and share your conclusions freely with all of us. A well-informed electorate is necessary for good government.
As a Rhodes Scholar with a Masters in Economics, Politics and Philosophy from Oxford, first in your class at West Point, West Point teacher of Philosophy and Economics, military and foreign policy expert, responsible for hundreds of thousands of soldiers and their families, shouldering executive responsibility as NATO SACEUR, including negotiating with heads of state and overseeing several theaters, you have borne the burden of decision making at the highest levels and served with great integrity and distinction.
And with all this heady responsibility, General Clark, you humbly express respect for our Constitution, our democracy and for transparency.
Wes Clark is a bona fide military and foreign policy expert. Clark is a scrupulously honest analyst who has the courage to state sometimes uncomfortable, but critically important truths. Political mythology runs deep in this country and, as we've all seen, the failure of so many in this country to see through the lies and distortions of the Bush White House till it was too late, or perhaps by some who should have known better to have had the intestinal fortitude to challenge those distortions has gotten us into a terrible, unnecessary war which has made us less safe and will take generations to pay for.
To their credit and because of their good judgment and personal courage, Barack Obama and Wes Clark both spoke out early against the Iraq War.
Wes Clark warned us from the beginning not to be distracted by a faux debate over the size and duration of a so-called surge because the key to long term stability and bringing our troops home from Iraq is and has always been what Wes called a "diplomatic surge".
Clark explained that Iraq's neighbors feared a spread of Iraq's sectarian violence and needed assurances over their own sovereignty and borders. Regional diplomacy was necessary to provide those assurances and in return to secure external influences over the sectarian groups in Iraq which had ties to these bordering states.
Clark also pointed out that economic conditions in Iraq, jobs, restored infrastructure and equitable sharing of the oil revenues were critical to bringing violence to an end.
Russ Feingold's been a stand up, courageous guy - the only Senator who voted against The Patriot Act when neocon fear mongering was at it's peak and few in the Congress or the Media dared to cross the imperial presidency.
No one's perfect, and we can agree that we have a responsibility to hold all our politicians accountable, but Russ Feingold has earned our respect and our trust and I believe we owe it to ourselves to take his words seriously. Regarding our disappointment on FISA, Russ Feingold had this to say about why we should be hopeful that under a Barack Obama presidency it would be fixed:
"People have a right to be disappointed but they also have a right to hope for change on this issue, particularly starting in January."
Much as Karl Rove is desperate to spin Wes Clark's honest assessment into campaign fodder for the hapless Republican candidate John McCain. Much as the traditional media has taken the bait like Pavlovian lap dogs, there are wiser heads, including Paul Krugman of the New York Times and Marc S Ellenbogen, UPI International who are standing up to state flatly that Wes Clark told the unvarnished truth about a Republican candidate who is so weak that neither he nor his party can bear it.
Finally some wiser heads in journalism are starting to speak out in support of Wes Clark and the simple truth of what he is saying and why he is correct to be saying it. The wimps in this sorry distraction have been the usual suspects in traditional media.
The Nation's editorial, which was picked up by Yahoo, calls into question the outrage against Clark's "mundane" observation:
Wes Clark stood by his criticism of John McCain in a television interview last night, stressing that while he would "never, never dis someone's service," it is legitimate to discuss what types of military experience are relevant to being commander in chief. Republicans have been twisting Clark's mundane observation that McCain's experience "getting shot down" in a fighter plane is not a "qualification to be president." Clark made the point in response to a question from CBS' Bob Schieffer on Sunday, while noting that he "honor[ed]" McCain's service and considered him a "hero."
Jeff Wood is waiting to die on Texas Death Row with an execution date of August 21st, 2008. Jeff was charged under the Law of Parties and was not the shooter in this crime. Jeff could not anticipate that a murder would occur. The actual shooter in this case has already been executed by the state of Texas.
It took 17,000 people contacting Governor Perry and the Board of Pardons and Paroles to make a difference for Kenneth Foster, whose death sentence under the Law of Parties was commuted by Governor Perry last year. Please help save Jeff as Kenneth was saved.
Wes Clark, Joe Lieberman's nemesis, followed Lieberman today on Face the Nation via satellite from Little Rock. General Clark did a great job on behalf of Barack Obama, which I'll get to in a moment.
But it was the General's tie that got my attention. I wondered whether perhaps his wife Gert had picked it out for him. And if so, I thought, what enjoyment they must have had choosing it. Wes usually sports a pretty standard tie in red or blue, something traditional. Today he was wearing a black and white tie. And I thought of Michelle Obama's black and white dress that she wore on the view.
That tie spoke volumes to me....it was so supportive of what the Obamas are trying to do for this country.
Richard Clarke told Keith Olbermann the other night that McCain's campaign seems determined to fight the election on national security and fear.
Given that the only issue on which McCain is currently out polling Obama is national security, it's no wonder that Charlie Black, McCain's strategic adviser and a Middle East lobbyist blabbed that a terrorist attack would be good for the McCain team in November. Holy fear mongering, Bat Man!
Barack Obama's campaign rightly fired back that this kind of talk is reprehensible.
One can hope that Americans, after 8 years of George W Bush's catastrophic belligerence, have been immunized against the fear tactics, but the traditional media, e.g. Tweety, are mesmerized by McCain's so-called national security credentials.
"What were you thinking, Mr, Bush?" went Michael Moore's voice over in Fahrenheit 9/11 as we all watched while Bush just sat there in a Florida school room taking the news from his aide that the World Trade center had just been hit by a plane.
Mr. Bush just sat there for several minutes, staring, waiting. He didn't seem too surprised. He didn't spring into action. he just sat there almost like maybe he had been expecting the news - or at least that's what Michael Moore was hinting at.
Well, it seems that ExxonMobil, Shell and BP are finally getting their contracts back, after 36 years and almost 5 years of bloody war.
This diary will deconstruct the latest excuse for the war - bringing democracy to the Middle East, one torture victim at a time.
General Wesley Clark, long time friend of Senator Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton, under whom Clark served as NATO SACEUR, endorsed Senator Barack Obama on June 6th, 2008 3 days after Barack Obama declared victory and one day before Senator Clinton held a press conference to pledge her support to Senator Obama's victory.
On June 6th, General Clark called on his supporters to "Unite Behind Barack Obama" on his blog securingamerica.com:
http://securingamerica.com/...
And a few days ago, Clark hit McCain hard on his National Security expertise:
Some media pundits are clueless about the political diversity of the people who serve in the military and also clueless about the skepticism of the voting public wrt the wisdom of Bush/McCain policy in protecting our security. Michelle Bernard seems to be one of them.
Today on David gregory's show "Race for the White House", Michelle Bernard, who considers herself right of center, was asked by David Gregory about General Wesley Clarks' remarks that on national security, John McCain is
"...largely untested and untried. He's never been responsible for policy formulation. He's never had leadership in a crisis, or in anything larger than his own element on an aircraft carrier or [in managing] his own congressional staff. It's not clear that this is going to be the strong suit that he thinks it is."
Michelle Bernard's response was that Democrats should avoid challenging Senator McCain's military expertise.
Say what?
With so much at stake this election, it was a peculiar year for activists like Senator Carl Levin to intentionally break DNC primary rules to make the point that Michigan Democrats resent the advantage that New Hampshire and Iowa have in picking the Democratic nominee for president.
That said, Senator Levin has a point. At the DNC hearing recently he reminded us that the Democratic presidential nominee is usually picked by either NH or IA because they go first. The urgency to change the system could not come at a better time. The Democratic Party, thanks to the crises precipitated under George W Bush's two terms, has perhaps never been more engaged. It's hard to know whether Barack Obama is our nominee because he has engaged a new generation of voters or whether a new generation of voters plus the rest of us cried out for a candidate of Obama's talents and Barack answered that call.
So with all of us fully engaged, Iowa and New Hampshire no longer have the argument that they pay closer attention to what's going on. We're all paying attention.
On June 2nd, on Open Left, Matt Stoller wrote a terrific piece on why Wes Clark would be a unifying choice for Barack Obama as he works to bring the party together as well as an excellent choice to serve as VP.
My personal heroes are those men and women who stood up publicly to denounce the ugly drum beat of war in the fall of 2002. And I'll always wonder what really happened to Paul Wellstone who along with Robert Byrd was one of the fiercest challengers of the rush to war.
Barack Obama and Wes Clark were among that small vocal group of political leaders who recognized that George W Bush and Richard P Cheney's vision for the Middle East was delusional. Recently Scott McClelland said that Bush's preventive war was really about "spreading democracy" in the Middle East, and that the lies about WMDs were tactics to trick the public to war. SPREADING DEMOCRACY??? George W Bush misjudged Scotty McClelland. Mr. McClelland it seems has a conscience. Perhaps "spreading democracy", one torture victim at a time, was just intolerable to him. Otherwise, why would such a seemingly gentle soul have subjected himself to the blowback and outrage that would surely rain down on his head from his new book?
