Wesley Clark in New Yorker
On War & Peace:
Bush used 9/11 as a pretext to implement Iraq invasion plan
Clark told me how he learned of a secret war scheme within the Bush Administration, of which Iraq was just one piece. Shortly after 9/11, Clark visited the Pentagon, where a 3-star general confided that Rumsfeld's team planned to use the 9/11 attacks as
a pretext for going to war against Iraq. Clark said, "Rather than searching for a solution to a problem, they had the solution, and their difficulty was to make it appear as though it were in response to the problem." Clark was told that the Bush team,
unable or unwilling to fight the actual terrorists responsible for 9/11, had devised a 5-year plan to topple the regimes in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Iran, and Sudan.Clark's central contention-that Bush used 9/11 as a pretext to attack
Saddam-has been part of the public debate since well before the Iraq war. It is rooted in the advocacy of the Project for the New American Century, a neo-conservative think tank that had been openly arguing for regime change in Iraq since 1998.
Source: The New Yorker magazine, "Gen. Clark's Battles"
Nov 17, 2003
On War & Peace:
Supported Iraq war while we were at war
Clark spent much of the Iraq war as an expert military commentator. Clark had reservations before the war [about the number of US troops needed for a fight with Saddam], but his reservations seemed to fade as American progress became apparent. Clark said
that Saddam "absolutely" had weapons of mass destruction, adding, "I think they will be found. There's so much intelligence on this." In the April 10th London Times, Clark predicted that the American victory would alter the dynamics of the region: "Many
Gulf states will hustle to praise their liberation from a sense of insecurity they were previously loath even to express." Clark praised the Anglo-American alliance, saying that Bush & Blair "should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt.
Clark called for victory parades down the Mall, and in another column, cheered the spectacular display of coalition force: "American military power, especially when buttressed by Britain's, is virtually unchallengeable today. Take us on? Don't try!"
Source: The New Yorker magazine, "Gen. Clark's Battles"
Nov 17, 2003
Page last updated: Oct 14, 2023