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| quote: | Originally posted by Vesa
Exactly my thoughts, too. Not everyone is happy about some of Clark's past deeds:
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/jatras12.html
Despite this story, I believe that Clark would be a lot better for US national security than Dean.
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Ah yes, that whole ww3 incident or whatever according to the opinion of an activist pulling sensationalist statements from various news clippings. An analysis from a NYTimes journalist who was actually there:
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Another notion about General Clark's record is that he was reckless when he proposed occupying the Pristina airfield in Kosovo after the war to preclude the Russians from rushing in troops.
After Mr. Milosevic agreed to withdraw his forces from Kosovo, NATO and the Russians were still at odds over the sort of peacekeeping force that should be deployed. Anxious to avoid the partition of Kosovo, NATO insisted that the Russian forces come under its command. While that debate was still going on, the Russian military abruptly withdrew several hundred of its troops from Bosnia and dispatched them to the airfield at Pristina.
I was in Moscow at the time and it was clear that this had occurred without the blessing of the Russian Foreign Ministry and initially, it seems, the Kremlin. After reports of the troop movements first surfaced, I asked the Kremlin spokesman to check with his superiors. He later assured me no orders had been issued to send troops to Kosovo, something that did not say a lot for civilian command and control in Russia.
General Clark was anxious to prevent the Russian military from sending in more reinforcements and creating a Russian-protected Serb enclave. Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine were persuaded to close their airspace to Russian transport planes. But what if they relented under Russian pressure or the Russians defied the ban? Would NATO intercept Russian planes carrying troops?
General Clark's plan was to put NATO troops on the airfield to make it impossible for reinforcements to land. But a British general, Mike Jackson, who was in charge of the peacekeeping force that was to stabilize Kosovo after the Serb troops withdrew and who now serves as the head of the British Army, complained that it was too risky, famously asserting, with some hyperbole, that it would be risking World War III.
Britain was the United States' staunchest ally, and so the Clinton administration decided to defer to the British position. Still, General Clark's recommendation was not rash; it was a judgment call that had been discussed in detail in Washington and that was initially supported at senior levels of the American government.
One lingering question about General Clark's résumé is why his NATO tour came to an abrupt end in 2000. He was not fired by the White House, as some accounts have suggested. Rather, former officials of the Clinton administration say, his tour was cut short by Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and Gen. H. Hugh Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were still smarting over their differences with the NATO commander.
The White House was told that General Clark's tour was being shortened a bit to smooth the transition to a capable successor. When President Clinton saw it for the slight it was intended to be, he was furious, according to senior Clinton administration officials. But the president was not anxious for an open confrontation with the Pentagon and decided to leave bad enough alone.
"Our belief at the White House was that General Clark had effectively led NATO forces to victory in Kosovo," Samuel R. Berger, Mr. Clinton's national security adviser, told me this week. "What we understood we were approving, after the war, was a succession, not a termination."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/03/p...4&ex=1074315600
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And a much more detailed take of the incident (although less than objective it backs up its arguments with credible references).
http://www.sgtstryker.com/weblog/ar...3853.php#003853
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