Last update 9 Jan. 2004

Here: Wes Clark Wins First Primary With 46.33% For "Rock The Vote" Video Trial duty pulls Clark off the campaign trail Gen. Clark led on battlefield and negotiations US should consult others on Saddam trial: Clark Capture doesn't sway Clark Wes Clark Blasts Bush For Rewriting Rationale For War Material girl gives candidate Clark a rap Happy birthday, Wesley! Divided over possible unity Native American Times Endorses General Wesley K. Clark

Travel Petersburg. Russia Welcome to Saint-Petersburg - the Northern capital of Russia, its historical, architectural and cultural centre! Wesley Clark's official sites: http://clark04.com http://americansforclark.com http://draftwesleyclark.com

Press release #125

http://clark04.com/press/release/125/

Press Room

Little Rock - Today RocktheVote.com declared Wes Clark the winner of their on-line primary for the best video broadcast from its Boston debate. As a part of the November 4th debate, RocktheVote.com invited the candidates to submit a video message directed at young voters. Clark received 46.33% of the vote total, almost double the 26.48% registered for the second-place finisher.

"This Rocks - literally!" enthused Clark campaign advisor Chris Lehane. "This campaign shakes it like a Polaroid picture."

Complete results of the poll (from www.RocktheVote.com):

The AMERICA ROCKS THE VOTE video contest ** Disclaimer Don’t get confused about this: the candidate who wins this contest in no way gets an endorsement or any other indication of support from Rock the Vote, at all. Rock the Vote is a strictly nonpartisan organization and does not endorse any candidate for any office anywhere at any time. We just endorse voting. This contest is for entertainment purposes. Results Are In! On November 4, 2003, Rock the Vote brought the Democratic presidential candidates together for a forum with the new generation of voters. It was aired live and prime time on CNN and millions of viewers tuned in. Nothing quite like that had ever happened before. As part of this groundbreaking event, Rock the Vote challenged every candidate to produce a 30 second video that would appeal to young people and encourage them to vote. Candidates never do that kind of thing targeted at young people, so this was completely new. Well, the candidates did it and you voted. Now the results are in. 1st Place 2nd Place 3rd Place 4th Place Wesley Clark 46.33% Howard Dean 26.48% Dennis Kucinich 12.03% John Kerry 4.24% 5th Place 6th Place 7th Place 8th Place John Edwards 2.98% Carol Moseley Braun 2.72% Al Sharpton 2.63% Joseph Lieberman 2.59%

Thanks for your vote!

Yahoo! News Tue, Dec 16, 2003

US should consult others on Saddam trial: Clark

Mon Dec 15,11:38 AM ET

Gen. Wesley K. Clark at the Hague Court on 15-16 Dec. 2003

THE HAGUE, Dec 15 (AFP) -US presidential candidate Wesley Clark, called to testify at the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, said Washington should consult with the international community on how to bring Saddam Hussein to court.

"The United States has to consult with the world community" over a trial for Iraq's ex-dictator, Clark -- who was NATO commander during the 1999 war against Yugoslavia -- said Monday.

A potential challenger to President George W. Bush in next year's race for the White House, Clark spoke after his first day of testifying at the war crimes trial of the former Yugolsav strongman.

Hailing Saddam's capture Saturday as "very good news", Clark also said the Americans "still have a long way to go" before the situation in Iraq is stable.

Bush vowed Sunday the former Iraqi strongman, like Milosevic reviled for numerous atrocities, "will face the justice he denied to millions", but what shape this will take could not emerge for months.

An international tribunal like that trying Milosevic has been listed as one option, though Iraqi interim leaders insisted he should be tried by a newly-created war crimes court at home that could hand down a death sentence.

Clark gave evidence Monday in a session held behind closed doors, at Washington's insistence.

The United States government also demanded that material deemed to be harmful to US national interests be removed before a taped version of the hearing is made public on Friday.

Clark, seeking the Democratic nomination for the November 2004 presidential race, commanded NATO forces during the war in Kosovo in 1999. He spent dozens of hours negotiating with Milosevic in the build-up to the NATO bombing of Kosovo and Serbia.

Milosevic is being tried on more than 60 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the 1990s wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo that tore apart the Balkans.

He faces a separate genocide charge over the war in Bosnia that left over 200,000 dead.

Prosecutors are expected to use Clark's testimony of his meetings with Milosevic during the Kosovo crisis to try to establish that the president controlled Serb troops on the ground and was aware of atrocities they committed against ethnic Albanians.

There is no love lost between Clark and Milosevic. In his book "Waging Modern War" Clark describes the Yugoslav leader as "a supremely manipulative liar and a bully".

"I knew that he had been trying to insert his men into the top leadership positions in the armed forces and that he already dominated the police," Clark says of Milosevic's influence during the Kosovo war.

According to Clark, when certain Serb military leaders would not agree with Milosevic, the president "worked around them, skipping echelons in the chain of command to drop down and give specific orders".

In his cross examination Milosevic will certainly seize the opportunity to put NATO on the stand for the war crimes he alleges they committed during their bombing campaign. He has repeatedly tried to cast himself as a peacemaker and NATO as warmongers in the Balkan wars. Clark recalls in his book that the Yugoslav leader branded the NATO commander a war criminal.

Since the trial opened there have been many closed sessions, with witnesses whose testimony was only heard by the court. The procedure is intended to protect witnesses who generally remain anonymous.

The court stresses that although the procedure for Clark is unusual, it is provided for in the ICTY rules.

They point out that the US request to have material edited will be put before a judge who can reject any claims that are deemed unfounded.

However, if the judges go against Washington's wishes it might affect future negotiations over the appearance in The Hague of other key American officials in the Milosevic trial.

The prosecution has been trying to get Richard Holbrooke, the US mediator who helped conclude the Dayton peace agreements that ended the wars in Bosnia and Croatia in 1995, to testify.

Milosevic's trial started in February 2002 and the prosecution's presentation of its case is expected to conclude in January 2004. After a three-month break the former Yugoslav president, who is representing himself in court, will present his defence.

Shortly after testifying at the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, retired Army General Wesley K. Clark called for a similar trial for Saddam Hussein, but still said he opposes the US intervention that led to Hussein's capture.

"The success of the mission in Iraq, it wouldn't of itself justify that it was . . . a wise decision to undertake at the time," the Democratic presidential candidate said by telephone from the Hague.

Democratic presidential candidate retired Gen. Wesley Clark addresses an audience at Franklin Pierce Law Center Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2003 in Concord, N.H. Saddam Hussein should be prosecuted publicly in Iraq and the death penalty should be among the options for punishment, presidential contender Wesley Clark said Wednesday in prepared remarks. (AP Photo/Lee Marriner)

"There are any number of things we could do that [would have been] successful that weren't done," Clark added, pointing out that the United States chose not to intervene against dictators in Liberia and Sierra Leone. "It just so happened that this administration chose to go into Iraq when there was apparently still no evidence of weapons of mass destruction."

Clark, who has staked his candidacy on opposition to the war, has tried in recent days to balance between cheering the capture of Hussein and opposing the US intervention in Iraq.

Senator John F. Kerry has walked a similar tightrope, saying on Sunday that he thinks Hussein might have been caught sooner with a globalized effort. And former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who has praised Hussein's capture, has also been saying that America is not necessarily safer with Hussein in custody.

Those statements might satisfy activist Democratic primary voters who haven't wavered in their opposition to the war, said Marc Landy, a political science professor at Boston College. But they could pose a dilemma in the general election, when voters aren't as likely to make such distinctions.

Clark, Dean, and Kerry are "locked in. And they probably didn't have room to alter that," Landy said. "But I think it's a great difficulty for them. The public generally does think that the world is a safer place because Saddam has been captured."

Indeed, a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll of 512 adults, conducted Sunday night, showed that 60 percent of Americans would consider the war worthwhile even if weapons of mass destruction were never found, and 57 percent think Hussein's capture will make it easier to win the war on terror.

Those numbers come after a period when Clark has been railing against the war in increasingly emphatic terms. At a fund-raiser in New York recently, he called the war "ambiguous and ridiculous." In a CNN interview on Nov. 30, he questioned whether the United States would be better off with Hussein out of power, saying the Iraq mission has been "a distraction from the war on terror."

Yesterday, Clark said Hussein's capture was good for American soldiers and necessary for an eventual US exit from Iraq. "I think anything that moves us toward more success in Iraq is helpful, but the principal threat to America remains Al Qaeda," he said. "We've always been concerned about Iraq. At the time I started talking about it publicly in August 2002, I accepted the fact that Saddam was a challenge. He just wasn't an imminent" threat to US interests.

Yet Clark also said Hussein seemed "straightforward in his brutality," and called for the death penalty to be considered as a punishment. And he compared Hussein's case to that of Milosevic, who is also accused of atrocities against his own people.

Testifying against Milosevic provides some closure for Clark, who negotiated with him during the Dayton accords and led NATO forces against him in Kosovo in 1999. Yesterday, Clark recounted being in the same room with his old adversary, who is defending himself and cross-examined Clark.

"It was vintage Milosevic," Clark said. "He was at various times obstreperous, difficult, petulant, challenging, irrational -- or, let's put it this way, illogical."

Clark has long cited his experiences with Milosevic to suggest his foreign policy experience makes him more qualified than other Democratic contenders.

Former vice president Al Gore may be supporting Howard Dean, but retired army general Wesley Clark has had a boost in his quest for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination from ... Madonna.

The Material Girl today publicly threw her support behind the retired four-star general, one of nine Democrats seeking to replace George W. Bush in the November 2004 election.

"I endorse him because I think he's a great guy," the pop superstar said on CNN Tuesday. "I think he's a natural born leader."

Madonna believes that because of his military experience Clark "knows how to deal with pressure" and as the former NATO supremo "has a good handle in foreign policy".

Clark spokesman Jamal Simmons was star-struck by the endorsement.

"We have a superstar supporting a four-star," he quipped.

Madonna organised a dinner for Clark at her Los Angeles residence in November, when he was in town raising funds for his presidential bid, Simmons said.

WASHINGTON -- After months of speculation that Howard Dean and Wesley K. Clark would someday unite to form a powerful Democratic bid for the White House, the two candidates are now locked in a bitter dispute over that very issue, increasingly directing attacks at one another and seemingly rejecting any chance they might work together to defeat President Bush.

Clark, whose campaign has developed a solid fund-raising machine, is one of the few candidates other than Dean to continually grab headlines -- last week by testifying against Serbian ruler Slobodan Milosevic at the Hague. Clark is also a Southerner, which could undercut Dean's bid in key Southern states. Unlike Dean, Clark has had a long career in international affairs. And Clark has also shown visible -- if incremental -- improvement in New Hampshire, home of the Jan. 27 primary.

"We're the candidate who is gaining while the rest seem to be sinking," Clark aide Laura Bergthold said. "I think if they look across the landscape and see any threat, it's us."

To be sure, Representative Dick Gephardt of Missouri has his own successes to tout, running in either first or second place in Iowa, and the other candidates insist they will gain momentum as the primaries approach. Most of Dean's rivals have grown more optimistic in light of recent events, especially the capture of Saddam Hussein, which has boosted public opinion of the war in Iraq and thus validated the candidates who voted for it.

Clark has portrayed himself as an anti-war candidate, one reason that he and Dean have been destined to clash in pursuit of anti-war voters, which Dean has claimed as his own for more than a year.

Whatever the reason, there is no mistaking that Dean and Clark have locked horns after months of civility.

The four-star general has sharpened his focus on national security and begun to pursue Dean by name, saying more directly that the former Vermont governor would not be qualified to be president and attacking a wider range of his policies.

Dean, in turn, has targeted Clark -- especially over a claim Clark made last weekend that Dean asked him to be his running mate in a meeting earlier this year. While Dean admits he will need a vice presidential candidate who is strong enough on defense to "plug that hole" in his own resume, he fiercely denied ever inviting Clark to fill the slot, touching off a very public tussle between the campaigns over which one was telling the truth.

"I'm not going to characterize what we discussed and what we didn't, but I can tell you flat out I did not ask him to be my running mate," Dean said of the allegation. "I think Wes Clark would be a fine running mate, but I have not asked him to be my running mate. I think that would be very presumptuous of me to do so, since I have not . . . had one vote yet in the Democratic primary."

Yet Clark insisted the subject was raised, and by none other than Dean.

"The vice presidency was discussed," Clark said while traveling in South Carolina. "I didn't bring it up, but he did. But I told him, I only had one decision, and that was whether to run to be the president of the United States or not.

"And I wasn't thinking about anything else, wasn't interested in talking about anything else."

Clark did offer a potential explanation for the disagreement: that while the topic of the vice presidency was "discussed," Dean never formally offered Clark the job. "It depends on how you define offer," Clark said yesterday on CNN. "It was dangled out there and discussed. I mean it was offered as much as it could have been offered, I think."

Both campaigns provided witnesses to defend each candidate's view. According to a Clark spokesman, Bergthold, who has worked with both Dean and Clark, had a conversation with Dean last summer in which he mentioned having Clark on a potential ticket. Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi, meanwhile, has denied his boss ever said any such thing.

As the spat continued, it appeared less likely Clark would agree to run with Dean if the former governor became the nominee. Asked yesterday whether it would suffice for a candidate such as Dean to recruit a running mate with strong national security credentials, Clark replied, "No."

"Having other people tell you what to do is no substitute for having been there in the arena yourself," he said. "You need a candidate who's got foreign policy expertise."

Asked whether he would consider running in the second-tier slot in any event, Clark said, "What I've said is that the decision for the American people in a Democratic primary and the reason I'm running is to be commander in chief. The president of the United States. That's the position in which I think I'm the best-qualified person of the field of candidates to serve, and that's why I'm running."