Wesley Clark on Post-9/11 Iraq War Plans and Iran

Right after 9/11, about 10 days after 9/11,

I went through the

Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and,

and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to

some of the

people on the joint staff who had used, used to work for me, and one of the

generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you gotta come in, you gotta come in

and talk

to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy." He said, "No,

no." He says,

"You, we've made the decision we're going to war

with Iraq."

This was on or about the 20th of September.

I said, "We're going to war with Iraq?

Why?"

He said, "I don't know."

He said, "I guess they don't know what else to do."

So, uh, I said, "Well, did they find some information collect,

connecting Saddam

to Al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There's nothing new that

way. They just made the decision to go to war

with Iraq." He said, "I

guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but

we got a good military and we can take down governments." And,

um, he said, "I

guess if, uh, the only tool you have is a hammer,

every problem has to look like a

nail."

So I came back to see him a few weeks later,

and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan.

I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?"

And he said, "Oh, it's worse than

that." He said-- he reached over on his desk

and he picked up a piece of paper and

he said, "I just..." He said, "I just got this down from upstairs,"

meaning the

Secretary of Defense's office, "today." And he said, "This is a memo

that describes

how we're gonna take out seven countries in five

years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon,

Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran."

I said, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir."

I said, I said, "Well, don't show it to me."

And I saw him a year or so ago and I said, "You remember that?" He said, "Sir, I

didn't show you that memo. I didn't show it to you."

Uh, I'm sorry, what did you say his name was?

I'm not gonna give you his name.

So go through the countries again.

Well, starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon, then Libya, then

Somalia and Sudan, and then back to Iran.

So when you look at Iran, you say, is it a, a

replay? It's not exactly a replay, but here's the truth, that

Iran from the beginning has seen that the presence of the United States in

Iraq was

a threat.

A blessing because we took out Saddam Hussein and the

Ba'athists. They couldn't handle him. We could-- took care of it for them.

But also a threat because they knew that they were next on the

hit list.

And so of course they got engaged. They lost a

million people

during the war with Iraq,

s- and they've got a long and unprotectable,

unsecurable border. So it was in their vital interest

to be deeply involved

inside Iraq.

Um, they tolerated our attacks on the

Ba'athists. They were happy we captured Saddam Hussein,

but they're

building up their own network of influence.

And to cement it, they occasionally give some

military assistance and training and advice, either

directly or indirectly, to both the insurgents and to the

militias. And

in that sense, it's not exactly parallel because there

has

been, I believe, continuous Iranian engagement.

Some of it legitimate, some of it illegitimate.

I mean, you can hardly fault Iran because they're

offering to

do eye operations for Iraqis who need medical

attention.

That's not an offense that you can go to war over perhaps,

but it is an effort to gain influence.

And the administration has stubbornly refused to talk with

Iran about their perception, mm, in part because

they don't want to pay the price with their domestic, our de-

US domestic political base, the right, right-wing base, but also

because they don't want to legitimate a government that they've been trying to

overthrow. If you were Iran, you'd probably believe that

you were mostly already at war with the United States anyway, since

we've

asserted that their government needs regime change.

So, uh, and we've asked Congress to appropriate

seventy-five million

dollars to do it, and we are supporting terrorist groups,

apparently, who are infiltrating and blowing up

things inside Iraq, Iran. And if we're not

doing it,

let's put it this way, we're probably cognizant of it

and encouraging it.

So

it's not surprising that we're moving to a point of

confrontation crisis with Iran.

My point on this is not that the Iranians are good guys,

they're not,

but that you shouldn't use force except as a last, last, last

resort. There is a military option but it's a

bad one.

I wanted to get your response to Seymour Hersh's piece in The New Yorker to two

key points, um, this week. Reporting the Pentagon's established a

special planning group within the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to plan a

ba- bombing attack on Iran. Um,

that this is coming as the Bush administration and

Saudi Arabia are pumping money for covert operations into

many areas of the Middle East, including Lebanon, Syria, and

Iran, in an effort to strengthen Saudi-supported

Sunni

Islam groups and weaken Iranian-backed Shias.

Some of the covert money has been given to jihadist groups in

Lebanon with ties to Al-Qaeda.

Fighting the Shias by funding with Prince Bandar,

um, and then with US money not approved by

Congress,

funding the Sunnis connected to Al-Qaeda.

Well, I don't have any direct information to

confirm it or deny it.

It, it's certainly plausible. The Saudis have taken a more active role.

You know, the, the Saudis, um, have-

You were just in Saudi Arabia.

Hmm?

You just came back from Saudi Arabia.

Yeah. Well, the Saudis have basically recognized

that they have an

enormous stake in the outcome in Iraq, and they don't

particularly trust the judgment of the United States in this area.

We haven't exactly proved our competence in Iraq.

So, um, they're ki- trying to take matters into their own

hands.

The real danger is, and one of the reasons this

is so complicated b- is because,

let's say we did follow the,

the, the desires of some people who say, "Just pull out and pull out

now."

Well, yeah, we, we could mechanically do that.

It would be ugly, and it might take three or four months,

but you could

line up the battalions on the road one by one, and you could put

the gunners in the Humvees and cock, load and cock

their weapons and shoot their way out of Iraq.

You'd have a few roadside bombs, but if you line everybody up,

there won't be any

roadside bombs, maybe some sniping.

You can fly helicopters over, do your air cover,

you'd probably get safely out of

there.

But

when you leave,

the Saudis have got to find someone to fight the

Shias.

Who are they gonna find?

Al-Qaeda.

Because the groups

of Sunnis who would be extremist and willing to fight would

probably be the groups connected to Al-Qaeda.

So one of the weird

inconsistencies in this is that were we to get out early,

we'd be intensifying the threat against us of

a super powerful Sunni extremist group, which was

now legitimated by overt Saudi funding in

an effort to hang on to a, a toehold inside

Iraq and block Iranian expansionism.