Second Annual Convention of Military Reporters

General Wesley K. Clark
Second Annual Convention of Military Reporters
Washington, DC
October 3, 2003

Thank you for inviting me today. I'm pleased to be here in a roomful of reporters who know so much about the U.S. military. One of my earliest experiences with the press came in 1981 when the Washington Post sent a reporter out to Fort Carson in the middle of a snowstorm to talk to me. He didn't know much about the military, and I didn't know anything about media relations. I had him sleeping out in a tent with no heater at zero degrees. Never liked the way that story came out.

I've learned a few things in nearly a quarter century since then. I've learned especially how important the people in this room are to the informed understanding of the military. You are the people who help interpret the military to American society. That is especially important today, when the American military plays such a vital role in our security. Unless the public and our politicians understand the proper role of the military, we're in danger of asking the armed forces to solve problems they cannot, and that will aggravate the dangers to our troops and to our country. So I am a great believer in the importance of your work, and I thank you for taking it on.

I am here today to say that the current Administration has taken our country badly off-course. It is violating longstanding values and principles of American democracy - with dire consequences for our security. Its treatment of our allies; its headlong rush to war; its poor planning for post-conflict Iraq is costing America hundreds of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. And its handling of intelligence - and its retaliation against its critics - may have been criminal. The possible manipulation of intelligence should be investigated by an outside body of experts with impeccable credentials and unquestioned integrity. The possible leak of the name of a covert CIA agent should be thoroughly and comprehensively investigated by an independent commission.

And finally, this entire Administration ought to be replaced - by January 2005 at the very latest. Let me tell you how I've come to these views.

As a kid growing up in Little Rock, I remember from a very young age being aware of threats to the country. I remember in the early 1950s, I could only have been 6 or 7, hearing radio reports on the Korean War.

I remember one day when I was back in grade school coming home from school and finding the Reader's Digest had arrived. I would always read the Digest when it came. And I remember one cold day in Little Rock pulling a folding chair into the hallway where the floor furnace was - in Little Rock, un-insulated homes could get cold in the winter when you had only a floor furnace, and I remember reading about the attempted revolt in Hungary and how the Soviets had crushed it with the tanks that rolled through Budapest and what they did with the people they captured. I could not put it down. It was absolutely gripping. I guess I must have been around 12 years old at the time.

That was the climate I grew up in - the Cold War - and I went to West Point because I believed America was in danger, and I wanted to do something to protect my country. The same concern for my country animates me today.

I am running for President of the United States because I believe the country is in a crisis. We're in a crisis at home with rising poverty, dropping incomes, exploding numbers of uninsured, the worst job losses in 70 years, and the worst budget deficit in American history.

The crisis at home is aggravated by a deeper crisis abroad - with a worldwide war against Al Qaeda disrupted by an unnecessary war against Saddam -- with staggering costs and obstacles facing us in stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan... with intractable conflicts simmering in the Middle East and South Asia... and with growing nuclear dangers in Iran and North Korea. On top of this, there is one ominous fact that aggravates every other danger:

We are in a crisis in our relations with the rest of the world. Today, at a time when we need friends and allies more than ever, resentment of America has never been higher, and that makes every American less safe at home and abroad.

In the first foreign policy speech of his candidacy, George W. Bush went to the Reagan Library and said this: "All our goals in Eurasia will depend on America strengthening the alliances that sustain our influence - in Europe and East Asia and the Middle East. Alliances are not just for crises -- summoned into action when the fire bell sounds. They are sustained by contact and trust. To be relied upon when they are needed, our allies must be respected when they are not."

Early last week, President Bush spent two days at the United Nations meeting with foreign leaders and could not get even one of them to commit money or troops for Iraq. That is a humiliating new low for the global influence of the United States. As the younger and wiser George W. Bush had said: "to be relied upon when they are needed, our allies must be respected when they are not."

Let me offer some support for his assertion. The 1991 Gulf War coalition had troops from 32 countries. Sharing the decision to drive the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait by force led to sharing the costs. The total cost of the Gulf War was about $60 billion. The United States paid roughly $6 billion of that total. The rest was paid by our allies.

Twelve years later, the decision to attack Iraq was not shared. Rather than presenting the international community with a problem and asking its assistance in helping to resolve it, the United States government presented the solution and asked for countries to back it. We refused to share the decision, and our allies are refusing to share the costs. The current $87 billion request before Congress, on top of the $79 billion already approved by Congress would bring the cost - so far - to $166 billion dollars paid by the United States taxpayers.

We are weaker without allies. We are not going to be able to maintain stability in the Middle East, support reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq, deal with the challenges of North Korea, continue this struggle against terrorism, face the problem of Iran and still return to prosperity in this country - unless we are sharing burdens with allies.

Unfortunately, the dire state of our relations with other nations is no accident; it is not bad luck; it cannot be attributed to minor miscalculations. It is a direct consequence of the willful decision of this Administration to turn its back on 60 years of national security success that came directly from strong alliances.

Our fractured alliances are a natural consequence of the backward way this Administration does business - both at home and abroad. Traditionally and ideally, we Americans meet our challenges by starting with the facts, analyzing the problem, and reasoning toward a solution - in as public a manner as possible. This Administration does things in reverse. They start with a solution, cast about for a problem that 'requires' their solution, and mold the facts to make their case - in as secret a manner as possible.

In so many areas, this Administration has the solution before they've heard the problem. They entered office with numerous solutions - among them national missile defense; tax cuts; drilling in the arctic, more secrecy for government; less privacy for citizens, and finally - the big solution: attacking Iraq. They seized on September 11 as proof of a problem that required the solution of attacking Iraq. Saddam was involved in September 11, they implied, and Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. So they made Iraq a centerpiece of the war on terror.

They worked to find the facts to make their case. In President Bush's State of the Union Address this year, he said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." As we now know, intelligence officials doubted the claim even as the President declared it.

Then, some weeks later on March 17, when President Bush gave Saddam 48 hours to leave, he said: "The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other."

Yet, last week, a letter was sent to the CIA by the Republican Chairman and ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee. According to press reports, this bipartisan letter asserted that there was "insufficient specific information" on "the status of Iraq's WMD programs and capabilities" on "Saddam's plans and intentions" and "on Iraq's links to Al-Qaeda" to justify going to war.

How did it happen that the President of the United States cited reasons for war that his fellow Republican on the House Intelligence committee now says were supported by "insufficient specific information"?

Yesterday, in another development, former UN Weapons Inspector, David Kay, in charge of U.S. efforts to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, told Congress the U.S. has found no biological or chemical weapons in Iraq and that Iraq's nuclear program was "rudimentary." This is a far cry from the pre-war claim that Iraq presented an imminent threat to the United States and our allies, and it should intensify the scrutiny of how we develop our pre-war intelligence.

On March 30th, Secretary Rumsfeld was asked about the search for weapons of mass destruction on a Sunday morning talk show. He said "we know where they are." I would like to know what intelligence he had that gave him the confidence to say that, and where the intelligence came from.

Let me quote a highly disturbing passage from the June 5th Washington Post: "Vice President Cheney and his most senior aide made multiple trips to the CIA over the past year to question analysts studying Iraq's weapons programs and alleged links to Al Qaeda, creating an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration's policy objectives, according to senior intelligence officials."

This Administration is trying to do something that ought to be politically impossible to do in a democracy, and that is to govern against the will of the majority. That requires twisted facts, silence, secrecy, and very poor lighting. That's why you need night-vision goggles to see what's going on over there.

They also retaliate harshly against anyone who expresses dissent, questions their facts, or challenges their logic. Dissent is the mortal enemy of ideology. Dissenters are demonized - whether you're a long-time ally or a loyal citizen. Cabinet Members have said that criticizing the President's policies is aiding the enemy.

But this may be a comparatively mild form of retaliation. The Justice Department has now opened an investigation to determine if White House officials were responsible for the possible leak of an undercover C.I.A. officer's name.

As you all know, Ambassador Joe Wilson traveled to Africa on behalf of the Administration to investigate whether Saddam had tried to purchase uranium in Africa. Earlier this year, he wrote in the New York Times that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Wilson's wife has since been named in the press as "a CIA operative on weapons of mass destruction." The concern is that her name was leaked to Novak to punish Wilson and to intimidate others who might challenge the Administration.

If it is true that intelligence was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat, and an undercover CIA agent was exposed to retaliate against Wilson for saying so, the country must take dramatic steps to restore the integrity of our intelligence services and the credibility of the American government. There are three things we must do.

Number one: We must have an independent, comprehensive investigation into the Administration's handling of intelligence leading to the war in Iraq. Nothing could be a more serious violation of public trust than to consciously make a case for war based on false claims. We need to know if we were intentionally deceived. We need to know if we face an intelligence gap - a gap between the intelligence we have and the intelligence we can trust - because the system has been twisted to suit the prejudices of policymakers. Only a thorough, independent investigation can help restore the integrity of our intelligence services, and regain the trust of our citizens and our allies.

Number two: We must have an independent commission investigate the charges that White House officials leaked the name of a covert operative of the CIA. John Ashcroft's Justice Department should have no role. He cannot investigate the White House; he has a clear and present conflict of interest.

September 11 made it clear that a great hole in our intelligence services came in the area of human intelligence. It requires individuals willing to risk death to gather information from enemies of the United States. It requires the most extreme discretion. Exposing the identity of a covert agent endangers the life of the agent and every one of their contacts. Anyone who did it, or approved it, or knew about it ought to confess the crime and resign.

If I were President, and there were any suspicions that a member of my staff revealed the name of a covert agent, I would demand that he or she immediately step forward and resign. This President ought to give members of his staff a choice: be deposed under oath or resign.

Number three: We need a change in leadership. As I travel back and forth across the country, I see a new patriotism in America - a new kind of patriotism. It's built on love of country. It's strengthened by the recognition that the country is in danger and that it needs our service now - service in the armed forces or service in our communities; volunteer service or paid service; full-time service or part-time service.

This new American Patriotism is not just about guarding our borders. It's about guarding what makes us distinctive as Americans - our personal liberties, our right to debate and dissent. It recognizes that we Americans owe our strength to certain values and principles.

We have done well in the world because of who we are: We are not a country that manipulates facts, ignores debate, and stifles dissent. We are not a country that retaliates against people who criticize the government. We are not a country that disdains our friends and allies. We are not a country that sheds blood before every other option has been exhausted. Every one of these principles was violated by this Administration in the war in Iraq - with costs to our identity and security that are catastrophic and rising.

This is why I'm running for President -- to return America to the core ideals of our democracy: personal liberty; service to country; respect for others; the right to criticize and correct the government. These ideals have made us great. They can make us greater. They can make us safer and more prosperous. We can have a new kind of patriotism in America. We can have a new kind of America. Thank you.