Apparently Wesley Clark doesn’t realize that before he can become president he first has to win the Democratic Party nomination. Does Clark really think he’s going to have much chance winning Democratic primaries with stuff like this,
Clark, relaxed and chatty, portrayed himself as a different kind of Democrat, one without strong partisan impulses. He said he “probably” voted for Richard M. Nixon in 1972 and backed Ronald Reagan. He did not start considering himself a Democrat until 1992, when he backed fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton. “He moved me,” Clark said. “I didn’t consider it party, I considered I was voting for the man.”
Hmmmm… Dean’s ahead of Kerry by 10 points in Iowa on an anti-war theme, so it’s hard to see the Democrats-for-Reagan movement really pulling one out there. On the other hand, most of his statements about Iraq are still a bit out there like this one,
“We are trapped in a jobless economy and an endless occupation” of Iraq, Clark told the crowd.
The U.S. occupation of Iraq is just a few months old and it’s already being characterized as “endless”? Sheesh. (How long before he backpedals and says a mysterious Middle East think tank made him say that?) Finally, Clark echoes another theme about the war that Joe Lieberman and others have also agreed with that I find perplexing,
Clark said his views on the war resemble those of Democratic Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) and John F. Kerry (Mass.), both of whom voted for the war but now question President Bush’s stewardship of the Iraqi occupation. “That having been said, I was against the war as it emerged because there was no reason to start it when we did. We could have waited,” Clark said during a 75-minute session with four reporters.
Okay, then when exactly would Clark, Lieberman, et al have gone to war? Would it have been better to wait four more years, for example, and risk the sanctions falling apart enabling Hussiein to better equip and arm his armed forces? I’d like to see a timetable from these folks on when the ideal time to have conducted this particular war would have been (other than the obvious answer which is when they were president rather than Bush). Given how ridiculously quick Iraq fell to American forces and the extremely low American casualty rate, this appears to have been the perfect time to have invaded Iraq. Source: Clark ‘Probably’ Would Have Backed War. Jim VandeHei, Washington Post, September 18, 2003.