http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/02/1440234
Democracy Now!
Friday, March 2nd, 2007
Gen. Wesley Clark Weighs Presidential Bid: "I Think About It Everyday"
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RUSH TRANSCRIPT
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AMY GOODMAN: Today, an exclusive hour with General Wesley Clark, the
retired
four-star general. He was Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the
Kosovo
War. He has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2004, he
unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. He
recently
edited a series of books about famous US generals, including Dwight
Eisenhower
and Ulysses Grant, both of whom became president after their military
careers
ended.
On Tuesday, I interviewed Wesley Clark at the 92nd Street Y Cultural
Center here
in New York City before a live audience and asked him about his
presidential
ambitions.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of these generals who run for president?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I like them. Its happened before.
AMY GOODMAN: Will it happen again?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: It might.
AMY GOODMAN: Later in the interview, I followed up on that question.
AMY GOODMAN: Will you announce for president?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I havent said I wont.
AMY GOODMAN: What are you waiting for?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Im waiting for several different preconditions,
which Im
not at liberty to discuss. But I will tell you this: I think about it
every
single day.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for the rest of the hour, well hear General Wesley
Clark in
his own words on the possibility of a US attack on Iran; the impeachment
of
President Bush; the use of cluster bombs; the bombing of Radio Television
Serbia
during the Kosovo War under his command; and much more. I interviewed
General
Clark on Tuesday at the 92nd Street Y in New York.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, lets talk about Iran. You have a whole website devoted
to
stopping war.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Www.stopiranwar.com.
[...]
AMY GOODMAN: General Clark, I wanted to ask you a tough question
about
journalists.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, now, that would be the first tough question
you've
asked me tonight.
AMY GOODMAN: There are more than a hundred journalists and media
workers in
Iraq who have died. And particularly hard hit are Arab journalists. I
mean,
you had Tariq Ayoub, the Al Jazeera reporter, who died on the roof of
Al
Jazeera when the US military shelled Al Jazeera, then went on to
shell the
Palestine Hotel and killed two reporters, a Reuters cameraman and one
from
Telecinco in Spain named Jose Couso. Many Arab journalists feel like
they
have been targeted, the idea of shooting the messenger. But this
tough
question goes back to your being Supreme Allied Commander in
Yugoslavia and
the bombing of Radio Television Serbia. Do you regret that that
happened,
that you did that?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: No, I don't regret that at all. That was part of
the Serb
command and control network. And not only that, I was asked to take
out that
television by a lot of important political leaders. And before I took
it
out, I twice warned the Serbs we were going to take it out. We
stopped, at
one news conference in the Pentagon, we planted the question to get
the
attention of the Serbs, that we were going to target Serb Radio and
Television.
AMY GOODMAN: RTS.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Yeah. And that night, in fact, Milosevic got the
warning,
because he summoned all the foreign journalists to come to a special
mandatory party at RTS that night. But we weren't bombing that night.
We put
the word out twice before we actually I did it.
AMY GOODMAN: You told CNN, which was also there, to leave?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I told -- I used -- I think I used CNN to plant
the story
and to leak it at the Pentagon press conference. But we didn't tell
anyone
specifically to leave. What we told them was it's now a target. And
it was
Milosevic who determined that he would keep people there in the
middle of
the night just so there would be someone killed if we struck it. So
we
struck it during the hours where there were not supposed to be
anybody
there.
AMY GOODMAN: But you killed civilians.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Six people died.
AMY GOODMAN: I think sixteen. But I think it's the media -- its the
beauticians, the technicians. It was a civilian target.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Yeah, they were ordered to stay there by
Milosevic. Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: But it was a civilian target.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: It was not a civilian target. It was a military
target.
It was part of the Serb command and control network
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of Amnesty International calling it a
war
crime?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think it was investigated by the
International
Criminal Tribunal in Yugoslavia and found to be a legitimate target.
So I
think it's perfectly alright for Amnesty International to have their
say,
but everything we did was approved by lawyers, and every target was
blessed.
We would not have committed a war crime.
AMY GOODMAN: Upon reflection now and knowing who died there, the
young
people, the people who worked for RTS, who -- as you said, if
Milosevic
wanted people to stay there, they were just following orders.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, it was a tragedy. But Ill tell you
something. If
you want to talk about tragedies, how about this one? We bombed what
we
thought was a Serb police station in Kosovo. We saw the Serb
vehicles. We
flew unmanned aerial vehicles over it. And we did everything we could
to
identify it. And we found that there were Serb police vehicles parked
there
at night, so we sent an F-16 in, dropped two 500-pound laser-guided
bombs
and took it out. We killed eighty Albanians who had been imprisoned
by the
Serbs there. They were trying to escape, and the Serbs locked them up
in
this farmhouse and surrounded them with vehicles. So, I regret every
single
innocent person who died, and I prayed every night that there
wouldn't be
any innocent people who died. But this is why I say you must use
force only
as a last resort.
I told this story to the high school kids earlier, but it bears
repeating,
I guess. We had a malfunction with a cluster bomb unit, and a couple
of
grenades fell on a schoolyard, and some, I think three,
schoolchildren were
killed in Nish. And two weeks later, I got a letter from a Serb
grandfather.
He said, You've killed my granddaughter. He said, I hate you for
this, and
Ill kill you. And I got this in the middle of the war. And it made me
very,
very sad. We certainly never wanted to do anything like that. But in
war,
accidents happen. And that's why you shouldn't undertake military
operations
unless every other alternative has been exhausted, because innocent
people
do die. And I think the United States military was as humane and
careful as
it possibly could have been in the Kosovo campaign. But still,
civilians
died. And Ill always regret that.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think cluster bombs should be banned?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: You know, we used, I think 1,400-plus cluster
bombs. And
there's a time when you have to use cluster bombs: when they're the
most
appropriate and humane weapon. But I think you have to control the
use very
carefully. And I think we did in Yugoslavia.
AMY GOODMAN: Right now, the US has rejected an international call to
ban the
use of cluster bombs. On Friday, forty-six countries were in Oslo to
develop
a new international treaty to ban the use of cluster munitions by --
I think
its 2008. Would you support that?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, you know, people who are against war often
make the
case by trying to attack the weapons of war and stripping away the
legitimacy of those weapons. Ive participated in some of that. Id
like to
get rid of landmines. I did participate in getting rid of laser
blinding
weapons. And I was part of the team that put together the agreement
that got
rid of laser blinding weapons. Id like to get rid of nuclear weapons.
But I
can't agree with those who say that force has no place in
international
affairs. It simply does for this country. And I would like to work to
make
it so that it doesn't. But the truth is, for now it does. And so, I
can't go
against giving our men and women in uniform the appropriate weapons
they
need to fight, to fight effectively to succeed on the battlefield,
and to
minimize their own casualties.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we'll have to leave it there. I thank you very
much,
General Wesley Clark.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: General Wesley Clark. I interviewed him at the 92nd Street
Y, the
cultural center here in New York, on the publication of the Great General
Series, on Grant, LeMay, Patton and Eisenhower.
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