Forwarded with Compliments of Government of the USA in Exile (GUSAE):
Free Americans Resisting the Fourth Reich on Behalf of All Species.
NOTE: Thanks to Rick Davis for all three of these. -- kl, pp
September 17, 2003
http://www.counterpunch.org/cohen09172003.html
Don't Be Fooled Again
Gen. Wesley Clark: War Criminal
By MITCHEL COHEN
Gen. Wesley Clark is a major war criminal. Please don't be fooled by the
current well-orchestrated push to nominate Clark as Democratic Party nominee
for president, at trap which Michael Moore has apparently fallen into as
well as a number of other well-meaning peace people.
Gen. Wesley Clark was in charge of refugee camps in the 1980s and 1990s
where Haitian refugees who were fleeing first Baby Doc Duvalier (and later
the new regime installed by the US following the overthrowal of the elected
Aristide government in the early 1990s), were packed, under appalling
conditions condemned by the Center for Constitutional Rights, among many
others. In the 1980s, many Haitian male refugees incarcerated at Krome (in
Miami), and Fort Allen (in Puerto Rico) reported a strange condition called
gyneacomastia, a situation in which they developed full female breasts.
Ira Kurzban, attorney for the Haitian Refugee Center, managed to pry free
government documents via a lawsuit on behalf of the refugees. These
contained the startling information that prison officials had ordered the
refugees sprayed repeatedly with highly toxic chemicals never designed for
such generic use.
The officer in charge of the refugee camp? None other than Gen. Wesley
Clark, chief of operations at the US Navy internment camp at Guantanamo, and
later head of NATO forces bombing Yugoslavia. The documents go on to say
that lengthy exposure to the particular chemicals can cause hormonal changes
that induce development of female breasts.
Medical studies of female Haitian refugees in New York revealed that they
had a much higher rate of cervical cancer than the rest of the female
population.
Half a decade later, Gen Welsey Clark was supreme NATO commander in
Yugoslavia. He presided over the massive use of depeleted uranium weapons
there which poisoned Yugoslavia's water supply and agriculture, leading to
an extremely high rate of miscarriages and childhood cancers.
Clark was in charge of NATO's "spin" in the Yugoslavia bombardment. Clark
called the destruction of a Yugoslav train filled with civilians by a NATO
missile "an uncanny accident." He said the same each time that NATO bombed
civilian targets, which happened frequently.
Paul Watson reported in the San Francisco Chronicle that "NATO bombers
scored several direct hits here in Kosovo's capital yesterday - including a
graveyard, a bus station, and a children's basketball court." (April 14)
A Spanish pilot flying missions for NATO, Capt. Martin de la Hoz, stated
that on a number of occasions his supervising colonel protested to NATO
about their bombing of non-military, civilian targets. "Once there was a
coded order from the North American military that we should drop
anti-personnel bombs over Pristina and Nis. All of the missions that we
flew, all and each one, were planned in detail, including attacking planes,
targets and type of ammunition, by US high-ranking military authorities.
... They are destroying the country," the Spanish F-18 pilot continued,
"bombing it with novel weapons, toxic nerve gasses, surface mines dropped by
parachute, bombs containing uranium, black napalm, sterilization chemicals,
sprayings to poison crops, and weapons of which even we still know nothing
about." (quoted in "Articulo 20," a Spanish weekly newspaper, June 14, 1999)
Clark defended all of these bombings, and was an integral part of the
Clinton team's "spin" operation in Yugoslavia.
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September 17, 2003 http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair09172003.html
A Vain, Pompous Brown-noser
Meet the Real Gen. Clark
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR and
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Originally Published June, 1999
Anyone seeking to understand the bloody fiasco of the Serbian war need
hardly look further than the person of the beribboned Supreme Allied
Commander, General Wesley K. Clark. Politicians and journalists are
generally according him a respectful hearing as he discourses on the
"schedule" for the destruction of Serbia, tellingly embracing phrases
favored by military bureaucrats such as "systematic" and "methodical".
The reaction from former army subordinates is very different. "The poster
child for everything that is wrong with the GO (general officer) corps,"
exclaims one colonel, who has had occasion to observe Clark in action,
citing, among other examples, his command of the 1st Cavalry Division at
Fort Hood from 1992 to 1994.
While Clark's official Pentagon biography proclaims his triumph in
"transitioning the Division into a rapidly deployable force" this officer
describes the "1st Horse Division" as "easily the worst division I have ever
seen in 25 years of doing this stuff."
Such strong reactions are common. A major in the 3rd Brigade of the 4th
Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colorado when Clark was in command there
in the early 1980s described him as a man who "regards each and every one of
his subordinates as a potential threat to his career".
While he regards his junior officers with watchful suspicion, he customarily
accords the lower ranks little more than arrogant contempt. A veteran of
Clark's tenure at Fort Hood recalls the general's "massive tantrum because
the privates and sergeants and wives in the crowded (canteen) checkout lines
didn't jump out of the way fast enough to let him through".
Clark's demeanor to those above is, of course, very different, a mode of
behavior that has earned him rich dividends over the years. Thus, early in
1994, he was a candidate for promotion from two to three star general. Only
one hurdle remained - a war game exercise known as the Battle Command
Training Program in which Clark would have to maneuver his division against
an opposing force. The commander of the opposing force, or "OPFOR" was known
for the military skill with which he routinely demolished opponents.
But Clark's patrons on high were determined that no such humiliation should
be visited on their favorite. Prior to the exercise therefore, strict orders
came down that the battle should go Clark's way. Accordingly, the OPFOR was
reduced in strength by half, thus enabling Clark, despite deploying tactics
of signal ineptitude, to triumph. His third star came down a few weeks
later.
Battle exercises and war games are of course meant to test the fighting
skills of commanders and troops. The army's most important venue for such
training is the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, where
Clark commanded from October 1989 to October 1991 and where his men
derisively nicknamed him "Section Leader Six" for his obsessive
micro-management.
At the NTC, army units face a resident OPFOR that has, through constant
battle practice coupled with innovative tactics and close knowledge of the
terrain, become adept at routing the visiting "Blue Force" opponents. For
Clark, this naturally posed a problem. Not only were his men using
unconventional tactics, they were also humiliating Blue Force generals who
might nurture resentment against the NTC commander and thus discommode his
career at some future date. To the disgust of the junior OPFOR officers
Clark therefore frequently fought to lose, sending his men on suicidal
attacks in order that the Blue Forces should go home happy and owing debts
of gratitude to their obliging foe.
All observers agree that Clark has always displayed an obsessive concern
with the perquisites and appurtenances of rank. Ever since he acceded to the
Nato command post, the entourage with which he travels has accordingly grown
to gargantuan proportions to the point where even civilians are beginning to
comment. A Senate aide recalls his appearances to testify, prior to which
aides scurry about the room adjusting lights, polishing his chair, testing
the microphone etc prior to the precisely timed and choreographed moment
when the Supreme Allied Commander Europe makes his entrance.
"We are state of the art pomposity and arrogance up here," remarks the aide.
"So when a witness displays those traits so egregiously that even the
senators notice, you know we're in trouble." His NATO subordinates call him,
not with affection, "the Supreme Being".
"Clark is smart," concludes one who has monitored his career. "But his whole
life has been spent manipulating appearances (e.g. the doctored OPFOR
exercise) in the interests of his career. Now he is faced with a reality he
can't control." This observer concludes that, confronted with the wily
Slobodan and other unavoidable variables of war, Clark will soon come
unglued. "Watch the carpets at NATO HQ for teeth marks."
-- CP
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http://www.counterpunch.org/lodge09172003.html
September 17, 2003
An Open Letter to Michael Moore
You Are Way Off Base About Wesley Clark
By TERRY LODGE
Dear Mike:
I've long appreciated your work, your politics and your writings. And
precisely because of that, I'm surprised by and disappointed in your
solicitation of Wesley Clark's candidacy for the Democrat nomination for
President.
Wesley Clark is a war criminal. He commanded the U.S. forces and the whole
NATO mission in the Kosovo war, which from the allies' perspective, was a
stunning bombing campaign. Toward the end of the comflict, he very nearly
touched off a major global confrontation when he ordered NATO forces to
attack an airfield where a Russian force had landed with the intention of
injecting themselves on the side of the Serbs to halt the butchery. Had
Clark's order been followed, it would have touched off the most dangerous
<Russian-U.S>. military confrontation since the Cuban Missile Crisis in
1962.
Fortunately, the British officer who had actual on-the-ground control of the
NATO troops explicitly refused to attack the Russians, thus avoiding a
catastrophic military confrontation with a politically unstable nuclear
weapons state (holding the second largest arsenal in the world).
Clark is getting his poltical advice from Bill Clinton, his
commander-in-chief when Wesley attacked Kosovo. That, alone, should be a
major clue to Clark's politics. Though the U.S. suffered no casualties in
the Kosovo "war", hundreds of civilians were killed, most of them in obvious
circumstances (on strategic bridges and highway stretches, in the Chinese
embassy and in office buildings that were being bombed). Worse, Clinton
authorized Wes to "try out" depleted uranium in the Kosovo conflict - and so
together they have left a 4,500,000,000-year-long legacy that will surely
produce an epidemic of health effects on many Croats and Serbs and others
for generations to come.
All this - and I haven't even touched on the wrong-headed injustice of the
U.S.' joining the Balkan war anyway. It surely couldn't have been because
the human rights record of the Croats was more "humane."
In those days, the Pentagon encouraged and assisted al-Qaeda to move its
operatives into the Kosovo region to become part of the "Kosovo Liberation
Army," a collection of ethnic cleanser-murderers, brigands and drug
traffickers who were, then and now, important guarantors of the continued
flow of Aghanistan's #1 cash crop - heroin - into the West.
It was Wesley Clark who touted the doggedness of those KLA "freedom
fighters" - but then before September 2001, al-Qaeda operatives, despite the
organization's suspected role in the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa, were
still a source of useful CIA assets.
I suggest you review the writings cited below and consider whether a
reconstituted Wesley Clark, with his ho-hum stereotypical New Democrat
viewpoints, is really the great savior of our damaged political dialogue
that you've held him up to be.
http://www.zpub.com/un/clark.html
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/KLA-drugs.html
Michael, I've admired you for years, from "TV Nation" to "Bowling," but
you're way off base about Wes Clark.
Terry Lodge
Terry Lodge is an attorney in Toledo, Ohio. He can be reached at:
tjlodge50@yahoo.com