Originally published in
March 2007
General Wesley Clark:
Because I had been through the
Pentagon right after
9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw
Secretary Rumsfeld and
Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the
Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "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 I said, "Well, did they find some information 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've got a good military and we can take down governments." And he said, "I guess if 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 reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And 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 going to 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, "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!"
- published: 11 Sep 2011
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