Patricia Sheridan's Breakfast With...Gen. Wesley Clark

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He has served as the Supreme Allied Commander and Commander in Chief of the U.S. European Command during the Kosovo campaign, authored two books and run for president.

Retired four-star Gen. Wesley Clark began his illustrious career as valedictorian of his class at West Point and went on to be a Rhodes Scholar studying at Oxford in England.

He describes the time he was shot in Vietnam in his book “A Time to Lead.” He earned the Silver Star for his service there.

Read more: link

[elleng]

1. Thanks for posting this, destroy!

Have to ask: Were you at all surprised by what has happened and is happening in Iraq?

We had some indications that the terrorist groups were marshaling their forces and getting much, much stronger and there were indications of some Bathist generals relationships there. We knew they were getting stronger. We knew they‘?d taken over some towns in western Iraq, but the strength of the onslaught and especially the capture of Mosul with the finances and the heavy weapons, that is a serious blow.

What about the fact that the Iraqi army we helped to train just melted away, as some reports have said?

This was less of a surprise. Most of us who have been engaged in training foreign militaries know that it’?s not just about the mechanics of the training. It‘?s about the quality of the government and the whole structure of the society and how well it supports the men and women in uniform. In this case, there were some obvious problems that had built up over time. . .

Where are we heading militarily? To more cyber warfare?

We are heading toward special operations. More and more capability given to a single soldier. The way we took down the Taliban government in 2001 in Afghanistan, that is the model for future warfare. Special forces, not massed armies. It doesn‘?t mean we won’?t need lots of troops at some point in the battle, but we learned some tough lessons in the case of Iraq. We don‘?t want to do it that way again. We want to be smarter, more precise, more deliberate, and draw on the bulk of the men and women who volunteer to serve only if we have to.