Perle Said Clark Was Against War

[Quixote1818]

Richard Perle was also on the panel WITH Clark, supporting the administrations take on things. Here is how he characterized Clark's position.


Schrock: Sure, I would love to know Mr. Perle's, you know, the general said time is on our side. My guess is you do not believe that.

Perle: No, I don't believe it and frankly I don't think made a very convincing case in support of that cliche but it was one of many cliches. At the end of the day when you sought to elicit from him a reconciliation of the view that time is on our side with what he acknowledged to be our ignorance of how far along Saddam Hussein is, he had no explanation.

He seems to be preoccupied, and I'm quoting now, with building legitimacy, with exhausting all diplomatic remedies as though we hadn't been through diplomacy for the last decade, and relegating the use of force to a last resort, to building the broadest possible coalition, in short a variety of very amorphous, ephemeral concerns alongside which there's a stark reality and that is that every day that goes by, Saddam Hussein is busy perfecting those weapons of mass destruction that he already has, improving their capabilities, improving the means with which to deliver them and readying himself for a future conflict.

So I don't believe that time is on our side and I don't believe that this fuzzy notion that the most important thing is building legitimacy, as if we lack legitimacy now, after all the U.N. resolutions that he's in blatant violation of, I don't believe that that should be the decisive consideration. So I think General Clark simply doesn't want to see us use military force and he has thrown out as many reasons as he can develop to that but the bottom line is he just doesn't want to take action. He wants to wait.

[saltpoint]

1. Richard Perle --

-- has not responsibly addressed the conflicts of interest which define his political position.

Perle is very intelligent, but it is an intelligence in the service of a path which leads to military action in the Middle East. Companies he is very close to have profited from these engagements.

If Bush had any moral clarity, he would ask for Mr. Perle's resignation.

If Mr. Perle thinks he can bully General Clark, he may want to reconsider.

[Moderator]

2. Not LBN... locking

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