We have more fallout from Drudge's denunciation of General Clark. Yesterday, the RNC tried to make two points: Gen. Clark has flip-flopped on the war, and his call for a Congressional probe (now criminal?!?) into the road to war is silly. The transcript of his Congressional testimony was offered in support of the second point - here is the general saying Saddam is a threat, that he has WMDs, and so on. However, Drudge conflated this into "The General was pro-war", and we were off to the races.
From the Carpetbagger report, in their attempt to monitor media fairness and accuracy:
Just to add to the last post, I found it interesting to see how the press played this story differently. It's a classic case study.
...Take yesterday's Drudge example. Drudge ran a report that took Clark quotes out of context and changed the meaning of Clark's original comments. The GOP and Lieberman's campaign tried to make a big thing about it, while Clark's campaign explained that this was ridiculous.
The report generated plenty of attention in the press -- some got it right, some didn't.
The LA Times, for example, got it wrong.
"Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie on Thursday attacked Democratic presidential hopeful Wesley K. Clark in Clark's hometown of Little Rock, Ark., saying testimony Clark gave to a Congressional committee in 2002 contradicts his current position opposing the war in Iraq. Clark, clearly fired up about what he viewed as a twisting of his comments, said his testimony was consistent with his current stand against the war."
Well, which is it? Do the comments contradict Clark's current position or don't they? Were his words twisted or not? The Times doesn't say, so its readers are left to try and guess who was telling the truth. That's not helpful, especially when there's a impartial correct answer that the Times ignores.
The Washington Post and New York Times were better. The Post, for example, noted a plain fact: "The full transcript...showed that the RNC was selective in its choice of excerpts." The Times said something similar, noting that the "full transcript reveals positions far more nuanced than the excerpts released by the Republicans." That's an exceedingly polite way of saying the GOP lied, but it gets the point across.
There is more, but that should be plenty.
Now, my objection - I don't know what the RNC may have said in a blast-fax or a phone call, but it is easy enough to find the text of the speech actually delivered by RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie. If I were interested in assessing media accuracy, I would want to link to that speech - if the Carpetbagger does, I can't find it. We do see this press release - taken with the speech, the story is consistent.
Next, I would probably look for the relevant excerpt, to see whether the media was summarizing Easy Ed accurately. They aren't. Here we go, in the continuation.
We will skip past a bit of delightful Clark-bashing, and come to the bit in question:
General Clark’s random assertions rarely pan out, but he continues to make them and the growing list is unsettling.
Just yesterday he said, “Let me be clear I have opposed this war from the start.”
An odd assertion, because as the debate over a resolution to authorize the President to use force in Iraq started in Congress, Wes Clark told a Congressional candidate he supported the resolution and if she were in Congress she should too.
And after the fall of Baghdad, in April of 2003, Wes Clark said, “Can anything be more moving than the joyous throngs swarming the streets of Baghdad? Memories of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the defeat of Milosevic in Belgrade flood back. … President Bush and Tony Blair should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt.”
Even as his campaign for the Democratic nomination started in September he told The New York Times, “‘At the time, I probably would have voted for it [the resolution], but I think that's too simple a question.’ A moment later, he said, ‘I don't know if I would have or not. I've said it both ways because when you get into this, what happens is you have to put yourself in a position - on balance, I probably would have voted for it.’”
Then the very next day he told The Des Moines Register that he “never would have voted for war.”
On balance his position does not seem clear at all.
Just Tuesday, he demanded that Congress probe why our country went into Iraq. But the Congress knows full well the reasons. They heard compelling testimony. Let me read you some testimony from September 26, 2002, before HASC: two weeks before the vote on the Iraq Resolution:
“There’s no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat. … Saddam Hussein is not only malevolent and violent but he is also to some large degree unpredictable at least to us. I’m sure he has a rationale for what he’s doing, but we don’t always know it. He does retain his chemical and biological capabilities to some extent and he is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn’t have nuclear warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks as would we. … The problem of Iraq is not a problem that can be postponed indefinitely, and of course Saddam’s current efforts themselves are violations of international law as expressed in the U.N. resolutions.”
There was no stronger case made than that expert testimony, the testimony of General Wesley Clark.
Now, was the selective excerpting of the transcript offered as evidence that that Gen. Clark had, at various times, expressed support for the war? No. In fact, the transcript was offered to rebut an entirely different point, as the segue makes clear: "Just Tuesday, he demanded that Congress probe why our country went into Iraq. But the Congress knows full well the reasons."
Now, did Drudge distort the RNC presentation beyond the bounds of truth? I think so. And, absent the speech, the RNC memo could be misleading. But has the Carpetbagger done a fair job of weighing what the RNC said against what the big media reported? No.
MORE: Later in the WaPo story we see this:
Nonetheless, Ed Gillespie, the RNC chairman, cited the testimony as evidence that Clark falsely claims to have opposed the war from the start.
"General Clark's random assertions rarely pan out, but he continues to make them and the growing list is unsettling," Gillespie said in a speech in Little Rock. Gillespie went to Clark's home state to criticize all the Democratic candidates, but singled out Clark, whom he said has made "increasingly careless comments about the president."
How does the WaPo quote "the growing list is unsettling", and then not mention the list?
The Times, we observe, provides the transition quote, but presents the story in the context of "did the General flip-flop". Points off.
Nice job by the Carpetbagger of uncovering some media bias.
UPDATE: We will single out Mark Kleiman for the "Sentence First, Then the Trial" award. I don't expect he would agree with Gillespie's speech, but Gillespie did not that offer the transcript to prove Clark was "pro-war". His second point, again - a Congressional inquiry into the road to war is silly, as plenty of fine people (like Clark himself), made the case against Saddam. Now, maybe the transcript is unconvincing on that point; however, arguments like "Bush lied about the WMDs" are weakened by the evidence that Clark "lied" about them as well.
Was it Harry Belafonte who sang “It’s as clear as mud, but it covers the ground”?
Roger Simon reproduces the text of Clark’s letter printed in the 4/10/2003 edition of the Times/UK. You’ll find it here. It seems like it was written by a supporter of the war despite various interpretations found in the comments.
Is there a way out? I suggest that Clark simply confess to being on a bender during the past three years or so, continually soused from the day he retired to the day last fall that Bill Clinton saved him from himself, dried him out, and urged him to give something back to our great country. It was at that moment that Clark knew that the only way he could regain his self-respect – heal himself and the nation – was to run for president. I think that the everyday Democrats, even the caucus animals, would accept this: they’d accept a habitual drunk over a Republican any day of the week. Evidence? The senior senator from a New England state…
Posted by: The Kid | January 16, 2004 at 05:37 PM
Read the whole context of Clark's HASC testimony, and the letter posted by Roger L. Simon, and even other things written/said by Clark prior to and immediately after the war, and it's not the slightest bit exaggerated to say he shared most of the basic analysis presented by the administration and others to support an aggressive approach to solving the Iraq problem.
The defenders doth defend way, way, way too much. Acting like a jury sifting evidence, if we look at Clark's pre-war positions and his April letter to the Brit paper, there's some evolution, but nothing jarring or odd -- and the tone's all basically positive (one might even use the idiotic and empty word favored by the lightweights since March 1991 -- "triumphalist").
When we get to the summer/fall, however, Clark's tone and substance take a wrenching turn -- one as a jury we notice doesn't appear to have much to do with real-world developments apart from his political plans. If -- in the favorite unsubstantiated formulation of the "serious" critics, the war was a "strategic distraction," it obviously was on March 18 as much as it was on July 18 or September 18. If Saddam's Iraq was "contained and deterred" as viewed from September, surely it also was in March 2003.
So I don't see how Clark's views on the war can be accurately described as either strongly skeptical pre-war or having evolved to negative based on actual developments during/after the war. Pretending, as Clark's defenders implicitly must, that this is the case, is perfectly fine partisan politics or tribalism, but it's not serious analysis.
The attackers probably attack a bit too much, too, as is to be expected from partisan sources.
For some non-partisans, views of Clark stem from a much earlier period. Clark is routinely savaged -- mostly by GOP-leaning critics -- as having "character" issues (being relieved of NATO command early) or "judgement" issues (the Pristina airport incident with the Russians). I typically don't put much stock in personality clashes I can't evaluate directly, so I'm not too troubled by the NATO command thing. I also think the Pristina airport incident (the UK officer famously declaring he wasn't going to "start WWIII" for Clark) is way over-blown.
Having said this, I think the overall Kosovo experience DOES (at least it did for me, approx. 4 years prior to Clark's political careeer) raise and largely answer devastatingly serious questions about the man's understanding of war and politics. Nearly 25 years after the last American soldier choppered out of Saigon, Clark oversaw a campaign straight out of McNamara's Pentagon and Bundy's NSC -- limited force, reliance on coercion rather than compulsion in a war situation, a lack of fall-back alternatives.
Owing to Serbia's nugatory resources and options, and a still-mysterious Russian cave-in at a Bonn meeting, the flaws of that campaign as devised by Clark did not reach full flower. But for me it was a worrisome confirmation that Clark shared the same basic incomprehension of how to wage either diplomacy or war as his then-political bosses -- many of whom are either already associated with his campaign or likely to figure prominently in his administration.
And the best defenses to these criticisms -- that Clark was constrained by the NATO mechanism and its pathologies, and by the lack of realism by his political bosses -- simply confirm that he lacked the skill, force, or even integrity to correct the problems, assuming (contrary to the evidence) that he saw them as problems. If his book had indulged in some self-interested whining on these points, at least I'd know he understood how naive and unsound the Kosovo enterprise was.
Clark, through his pre-war statements, showed he could understand and agree with practical and realistic approaches to very difficult and vital challenges. His Kosovo performance, however, doesn't provide much evidence that his true instincts are so reliable.
Posted by: IceCold | January 17, 2004 at 12:49 PM
RE: Clark's testimony before Congress, I'll just offer one piece of information that you might find interesting.
Clark was called to testify on the same day, and as an expert alternative to the views of Richard Perle himself. This is how Perle characterized Clark's position that day, a statement found in the very same transcript to which Gillespie referred:
A later speculative, statement that one "probably" would have voted for A resolution authorizing the use of force under certain circumstances (for example, the Biden-Lugar alternative favored by Dean) -- and for the purpose of providing backup or leverage in an approach to the UN -- is quite different from "voting for the war."
Let's not pretend that Gillespie wasn't trying to say that Clark's testimony was in favor of the war that Bush waged. That was the intent of Gillespie's whole exercise: to undermine Clark with those Dems who are anti-war. The hyperventilating bit about Clark calling for an investigation when he "knows" why the war was waged was just the lagniappe.
Misleading, indeed.
Posted by: Julia Grey | January 18, 2004 at 07:50 PM
The intent of the exercise looked more like a claim the General was incoherent. "On balance his position does not seem clear at all."
And that charge is "dead-on balls accurate" (it's an industry term).
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