Sunday, 29 September 2019

POST 381 WELL I NEVER

Hey There, welcome and warm greetings. Below an interesting article and at the end my own speculation and not endorsed by the source providers, purely my own stuff and not in any way implicating spaceweather.com
A NEW SOURCE OF SPACE RADIATION: Astronauts are surrounded by danger: hard vacuum, solar flares, cosmic rays. Researchers from UCLA have just added a new item to the list. Earth itself.
“A natural particle accelerator only 40,000 miles above Earth’s surface is producing ‘killer electrons’ moving close to the speed of light,” says Terry Liu, a newly-minted PhD who studied the phenomenon as part of his thesis with UCLA Prof. Vassilis Angelopoulos.
This means that astronauts leaving Earth for Mars could be peppered by radiation coming at them from behind–from the direction of their own home planet. 

 Courtesy  spaceweather.com 
NASA’s THEMIS spacecraft ran across the particles in 2008 not far from the place where the solar wind slams into Earth’s magnetic field. Researchers have long known that shock waves at that location could accelerate particles to high energies–but not this high. The particles coming out of the Earth-solar wind interface have energies up to 100,000 electron volts, ten times greater than previously expected.
How is this possible? Liu found the answer by combining THEMIS data with computer simulations of the sun-Earth interface. When the solar wind meets Earth, it forms a shock wave around Earth’s magnetic field, shaped like the bow waves that form ahead of a boat moving through water. Within this “bow shock” immense stores of energy can be abruptly released akin to the sonic boom of an airplane.
Liu found that some electrons are shocked not just once, but twice or more, undergoing mirror-like reflections within the bow shock that build energy to unexpected levels. Most of the boosted particles shoot back into space away from Earth. 

 Courtesy spaceweather.com   (both images from Fri Aug 9 2019)
“Similar particles have been detected near Saturn, suggesting that the process is at work there as well,” says Liu. “Indeed,” adds Angelopoulos, “this type of particle acceleration could be happening throughout the cosmos–from supernovas to solar storms–wherever a supersonic wind hits a barrier.”
Meanwhile, back home, Earth-orbiting satellites and departing astronauts have a new source of radiation to contend with. It’s right over their shoulder.
Read the original research at Science Advances. (read further from spaceweather.com Frid Aug 9 2019)

 Of course the conspiracy theory did they or did they not go to the Moon and coupled with the Van Allen Belts and the low Sun stuff and Cosmic Rays one can only wonder, I do feel they went to the Moon the Rockets went the way as said but empty but for equipment and the astronauts another way, I know, I know all the yells and prove it, I have said all that in details in other POSTS and the great Gurus of our morals our judges and moral compasses  who are Google, Twitter and Facebook alias technocrats alias CIA, GCHQ and all the elite moral so called guardians are de platforming and smearing, for instance many years back Ben Rich was accredited and his information confirmed by Dr Edgar Mitchell and others has suddenly got a black line and sceptic and debunker's there under his name, when I gave my proof of his authenticity I got a sceptic hounding me over my NDE, he got my name wrong and my profession, my age wrong and doctored and edited the original YOU Tube video and that was way back.   
Courtesy Cosmos.ESA.int
Going back to the spaceweather.com way back in 2009 in my;


to be precise; Friday 5th June 2009 in Blog  Reality and Tues 3rd March 2009 there are some interesting findings with Themis and my comments. Also if one can find it the 6 hour Nassim Haramein and the interesting four hours in Sun findings and NASA  cover up, I'll try my best to find it, I am not that skilled at finding broken up YOU TUBE or take down ones. 
LO AND BEHOLD i FOUND THE ORIGINAL 8HR ONE.
THE SUN STUFF STARTS AT ABOUT 5 HRS 10 MINS AND ABOUT AN HOUR 
HOPEFULLY I HOPE IT HAS NOT BEEN DOCTORED AND IS STILL UP THERE AS FROM 14 TH AUG 2019
I did this twice because something strange was playing up.
For those who have followed me from 1970 through workshops,private meetings, lectures and then onto the net with the late energygrid magazine and the captured blogs and some diagrams as in the Archive link above and then onto this site I started my scientific quest and tracking and the Universes shift and energy output through electron volts and this was the first of the newspaper ones; 
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130102140349.htm

Monster" outflows of charged particles from the centre of our Galaxy, stretching more than halfway across the sky, have been detected and mapped with CSIRO's 64-m Parkes radio telescope.

Compare this with 'An article by the Dailey Telegraph Science Editor 5th July 1995 revealed the startling findings of scientists in America and Japan.

They normally measure cosmic rays in millions of electron volts. Over the last two years they have measured rays to the power of 320 billion, billion electron volts. To quote the article:

“Something out there –no-one knows what- is hurling high energy particles around the Universe, in this case the most energetic ever observed by scientists…Not even the power released by the most violent exploding stars could account for them. Indeed conventional theory says such particles should not exist…”

Coming back to the tardigrades in the last POST I can imagine or surmise that the same technique as in the Phantom Wave, one could capture the frequencies as of the Salamander as Gariaev did and get the tardigrades DNA cellular regeneration and survival frequencies and put all sorts of bacteria and sequencing algorithms containing these frequencies and literally new life would spring up and even the frequencies of oxygen once the bacteria start spreading and releasing their gases and excreta. Now there's a thought to dwell on.


My feeling is that 5G is an experiment in a sort of human engineering, part of it is terraforming us as in transhumanism and cyborg technology and the reason for this maybe; one the technocrats may sense or know of the imminent 6th extrication, see POST 370 till now and that they are not prepared for the possible loss and so go off world;      
The big five mass extinctions
·                            The big five mass extinctions. ...
·                            Late Devonian, 375 million years ago, 75% of species lost. ...
·                            End Permian, 251 million years ago, 96% of species lost. ...
·                            End Triassic, 200 million years ago, 80% of species lost. ...

·                            End Cretaceous, 66 million years ago, 76% of all species lost.
Or the rise of the next shift in evolution could also be an awakening of the human mind from the fear and sleep and despondency into super consciousness and new race of evolved human which I call Homo Spiritulana Energetica and the technocrats have a fear of this because organic life thrives and transhumanism, eugenics, cyborgs are gone and the tele powers as hinted in back POSTS come in and there is peace on Earth, nature restored and technology in tune with nature and the Universal Intelligence.



How about this a robot priest--perhaps Pope ---perhaps all religious heads.  Maybe churches, synagogues, shrines, mosques, doctors surgeries(robots do operations remotely now---next stop, store assistants, GP's and so on.)


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-paid-hundreds-contractors-transcribe-190743545.html           WOW

These two are linked and more or less self evident and need little explanation or comment.


jurassic-site-could-help-plan-for-climate-changecan-now-identify-
fear.html?__source=twitter|main  (as above link both are are self evident and complimentary).

 Maybe the academics may come across the five extinctions in their own way, since so many scientific departments in the same and different countries and Universities reinvent the wheel and vie for funds and outdo one another and instead of sharing their knowledge they hoard it and acclaim status and oh the glorious headlines. Perhaps they will have the courage to tell the truth about climate change; a natural cycle that has happened many times before, human pollution no more than 15 % or perhaps a grudging few more %. CHEMTRAILS, HAARP, 5G AND SATELLITES 80% all in the name of the Internet of Everything and total paranoia and fear at the loss of their own vulnerability and ego power being challenged, they are masking as All knowing behind a technocratic superiority, take their robots, nano tech and algorithms and they are emotionally, humanely, socially baron, they have the mind sets of the robots they build, sterile, non emotional and cruel to the letter of their dictates, statute, laws and are incapable of mercy and compassion and furthermore they are as fanatic as the terrorist they abhor, they share the same boat in different separate compartments.    and     

  5G  A great video about making this safer without not having.
Much of the same above.


      

https://www.space.com/india-moon-chandrayaan2-photos-of-earth.html


The more one peers in to the mystery of the Universe it poses more questions. As Einstein said 'all is vibration' and the endless process of evolution will just throw up more configurations, computations and more twists and turns, well its a game of chase and find and for some satisfying as long as one does not pretend to be a know all. 

Uncle Donald messes up a Hurricane map and angers weather prediction people and climatologists. 


https://fee.org/articles/5-surprising-scientific-facts-about-earth-s-climate/#
AMAZING MAN AND THIS PROJECT  AND YES WE CAN HELP NATURE.

This is another bit of the discussion about climate change. The natural cycle versus it's all our fault and feel guilty, yes we have our share in this as well, but not so much as made out. As you will see lightening hit part of the above landscape and the recovery was spectacular.
What if I told you that the entire biosphere of this planet is about to be blanketed with over 20,000 high frequency radiation emitting satellites, starting with SpaceX's newly FCC-approved launching of 4,425 satellites into orbit in the next few years?

This is not just a concern of a few natural health advocates. US meteorologists, for instance, issued a statement in June of this year that they are worried 5G will disrupt their ability to properly sense the weather. And why? Because 5G radiation is preferentially absorbed by water molecules (the molecule that all of life is built upon!) -- a fact that represents a form of electromagnetically-induced, planetary climate change and adverse health effects that virtually no one is talking about.

If this ill-conceived agenda moves forward as planned, millions more small cell installations emitting 5G (millimeter wave) radiation will be placed near every few homes, in every neighborhood in this country. No one and nothing will be immune to exposure to a form of radiation that has never been adequately tested for safety, but which countless studies already indicate have adverse biological effects.

The 5G agenda has at least a trillion dollars worth of industry momentum behind it, from sectors as diverse as Big Tech, agriculture, financial services and even the military. It's not just about faster connectivity, but total, real-time surveillance, and the even more concerning potential for weaponization.


https://www.technocracy.news/silicon-valley-technocrats-intend-to-settle-the-moon/
Just after I posted in POST 378 about tardigrades  this came up. Oh boy. Yes after Mars ---what then?  I shudder to even contemplate a Star Trek future with animosity, zealousness and jealousy and egoism with cruelty that is apparent on Earth with the rape of the resources for power and wealth and this spread to other planets and perhaps civilisations that are not like Earths. Should there be ET out there then perhaps they may intervene or by miracle the collective unconscious on Earth go through a major purging.
Courtesy Luke Wilhelm Dragon (quotes below are Luke's)
The Morality of Terraforming and Planet Ownership
Do we really have the right to colonize another planet?

If it be true that scientists at Silicon Alley and elsewhere are telling the world 5G is safe and yet send their own children to Waldorf schools because they do not use computers there until children are twelve, then these scientists have no conscience or care about other kids and people and these will be some of the boffins for making it possible to send craft and terraform other planets. 


 In many of my back POSTS I have been on about climate change and it is a natural cycle and the worlds governments and certain agencies are making a lot of 'dosh' from it. I have also said that we need to clean up our act as well the above link and back links have shown the 'the scam' is beginning to fall apart. 


https://www.livescience.com/russian-uncrewed-soyuz-lands-humanoid.html?utm_source=ls-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20190909-ls
In the intended SMART CITIES robots will be the 'in thing' and now the ISS will soon be Smart engineered, the rocket to the ISS WAS ROBOTISED. In some projects in Smart Zones, cars without drivers, no traffic lights needed they will be connected to the 'internet web' and the 5G masts and antennae on lampposts or lamppost like posts where there are none.
Baikonur Cosmodrome
Courtesy NASA
Navias said Russia's Skybot F-850, affectionately nicknamed "Fyodor," appeared to be doing well as it sat in the commander's seat of the Soyuz spacecraft. A television view from inside the Soyuz showed the robot clutching a small Russian flag in its right hand as a toy cosmonaut bobbed around the cabin as a zero-gravity indicator. 
"He made it to orbit and is en route to the International Space Station," Navias said of the robot.
"The Soyuz 2.1a booster, equipped with a new digital flight control system and upgraded engines, is replacing the Soyuz FG booster that has been used for decades to launch crews into space," NASA officials wrote in a statement. "The Soyuz spacecraft will have an upgraded motion control and navigation system, as well as a revamped descent control system," they added.
The mission will also help Roscosmos develop a cargo version of the Soyuz capsule capable uncrewed reentry to return experiments and other gear to Earth, Navias said. Russia's Progress cargo ships can currently only deliver supplies, and are filled with trash and discarded at the end of their missions. (perhaps they will send to the Moon to feed the tardigrades!!!!---eventually

Perhaps I am old fashioned and maybe these calamitous events on Earth is the Armageddon before the consciousness of Compassion and sharing somehow turn on the Trillionth G upgrade to mass humanity of Compassion, respect, true forgiveness, humility and sharing, a world that works for everyone everywhere.  




I trust you survive and thrive and most of all Be Well

Geoff



  


Saturday, 21 September 2019

POST 380 QUICKENING.

Hello and greetings with a warm welcome. There is a definite sense of a quickening with it being science, politics, environmental issues of scandals and intrigues. Including the first so called 'space crime' which is that;
Courtesy https://www.space.com/news
 NASA astronaut Anne McClain on Saturday (Aug. 24) refuted claims that she inappropriately accessed the bank account of her estranged spouse after details of their divorce were made public in the New York Times this week. 
While in the middle of their separation process, McClain's spouse Summer Worden has claimed that McClain accessed her bank account from a NASA-affiliated computer network, according to a report from the New York Times on Friday (Aug. 23). Worden has accused McClain of identity theft and claimed the astronaut accessed the account from aboard the International Space Station during a recent space mission, and that the agency's Office of the Inspector General is looking into the matter.
Today, McClain said in a Twitter statement that there's "unequivocally no truth to these claims."
"We've been going through a painful, personal separation that's now unfortunately in the media," McClain continued. "I appreciate the outpouring of support and will reserve comment until after the investigation. I have total confidence in the IG [Inspector General] process." (Anne was supposed to done a lot of the proceedings while on the ISS).
https://www.space.com/interstellar-dust-in-antarctic-snow.html

Many years back and in the old energygrid magazine I did a lot of blogs around an astounding scientist Dr Paul La Violette and his findings which were part of his PH.D dissertation and thesis on ice drilling's at the Arctic and also his work on super waves I have seen some You Tube videos still around by him. Dr Paul has been interviewed by many complimentary presenters, like Camelot for instance. Many of these up to date discoveries are 'reinvention of the wheel'. The You Tube video is by Dr Paul La Violette and it is from his work I gleaned more of the proof of the validity of the '1967' writings. 




The State has been told it must delete data held on 3.2 million citizens, which was gathered as part of the roll-out of the Public Services Card, as there is no lawful basis for retaining it.
In a highly critical report on its investigation into the card, the Data Protection Commission found there was no legal reason to make individuals obtain the card in order to access State services such as renewing a driving licence or applying for a college grant.
As aspects like racial recognition(which in Wales UK, a Welsh citizen lost a case to Welsh police in court as to his privacy) and the quote from above link shows this cyber come digital come Smart employment.
This is about the so called weird behaviour of black holes, I have given up on science as it gets more weird the more one discovers so I now just take a casual interest on what's going on----the usual we think, we surmise----the problem with this is the more attention and intention one gets on the subject one can create the out come of the prediction----one can create the reality one dwells on----the Universe will be glad to accommodate you and then suddenly its a step ahead and baffling. 

This is extremely important---read the article and see that climate changes happen regularly----and then they almost apologetically come back to----well it's us. Read my back POSTS from 370 to now and I have been going on about this for yonks.
https://www.livescience.com/64614-ancient-briton-faces-photos.html
Just explains itself.


https://www.livescience.com/mini-lab-brains-produce-waves.html?utm_source=ls-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20190829-ls
This is about making mini brains in the lab that produce brain waves and I suspect that soon they will marry it or wave implant AI and cause a robot to have an organic brain instead of algorithms in fibre optics and nano circuit boards, a real live organic brain in a cyber metal or highly developed scaffold skeleton which is clothed with artificial skin and feels and looks oh so real---hey Atlas Robot Terminator have a good day; enjoy, yuk or wow great?   

or https://www.cell.com/stem/newarticles
It is way beyond me and just have a gander at the tech stuff---oh boy.

Well insects maybe our future fodder and would rather eat them than GMO foods, a well known TV Chef on tour in Mexico eat some and his comments were favourable(Rick Stein Mexico series)

The first thing we should assume is we are very dumb. We can definitely make things smarter than ourselves. says Musk
More in article----however I'll remain dumb rather than be controlled by AI and brain zapped , see below. 


This is the final frontier of one's brain and I did run an article about Obama's idea of a laser which has a message to one's brain and does 'the voice in the voice in the head job' as I call it. You can read more in this https://futurism.com/the-byte/pentagon-transmit-messages-laser-head---I suspect that the laser will be like a carrier wave (just see carrier waves in Radio transmissions and that the wave can be modified as such---its all vibrations and frequencies apparently Obama was very keen on this). SEE POST 376 13th August 2019 and a chart of frequencies also a reminder of this;

and of course the earlier Echelon delivery;
Frequencies in POST 376 that go with the diagram you can now add GCHQ  and every other Service.
About radiation and Cosmic Rays. Of course I have been on and on about these in so many back articles and many views and sources.
  free electrons--my electron volt
In my 1967 writings which all my work is based upon I mentioned many times how electron volts and various articles about them in back POSTS and blogs would to my interpretation of the brief which the 1967 action-ed me to carry out in order to prove anew era and Ascension process was under way and this was the warning to change our ways as the 6th extinction was under way, you could say a hint of Armageddon.
https://www.livescience.com/cyberattacks-could-kill-more-than-nuclear-attacks.html

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-smart-buildings-are-the-latest-threat-vector-for-cyberattacks/


The two links above are in some ways linked or cross over; By hacking into a nuclear facility and its complexity of so called fail safe it could set off a nuclear launch or explosion and cause the 'enemy or opposition' to think a nuclear strike is on the way. All nuclear silos are known to every nuclear country and they are counter aimed at each other in a game of chess. There was a few years back a game of moving these or disguising these surreptitiously so a preemptive strike would not be noticed and gain the advantage of the first deadly strike, of course now with so many satellites, especially the so called secret ones of which some 'citizen scientists' are spotting and finding, the very SECRET Surveillance and net works against itself.   

The second link is interesting; as soon as I saw and heard of persons going into a Smart Robotised City , town, village or what is termed a designated zone which are smart areas eventually to be linked together making the 'links of the chain' one long endless chain or net and hence to the 'internet of everything' or world wide surveillance net. So far the 'Brics' nations do not want a Western 5G Smart Network or the IMF based on the petrol dollar. This I feel is the reason for the sanctions wars and economical worldwide 'stuff'.   BRICS is the acronym coined for an association of five major emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Originally the first four were grouped as "BRIC" (or "the BRICs"), before the induction of South Africa in 2010.
Type: Economic, political, regional cooperative ...
Finance Ministers: Paulo Guedes; Anton Silua...
State Leaders: Jair BolsonaroVladimir Putin;  It has grown seince then
Courtesy Internet
When I was in Forensics I got to meet many 'security' experts and private security contractors and they told me that they thought you could only make something 60% fail safe or security tight. They had found that trying to go higher than that the various systems for example, laser, sound, trip wires, light detection, heat, cold, pressure plates, sentinel robot patrols, dogs, drone patrols, human guards, all of these could set one another off; in one place they had so many of these that when the electric supply went off, a simple power cut and by the time the back up emergency generators cut in, lots of things came on and pandemonium followed.

So with a Smart City and so with all the 'waves and frequencies', junctions, computer technologies, fibre optics, WI FI and so on, you can imagine hackers and these young and older geeks finding ways in as challenge to their skills and also problems and and anger at a total surveillance although the 'sales pitch is ----you will always be safe, we have every bodies movements tracked, you can walk the city at night and never be mugged and a doctor will be on call in moments, you can leave your car and home doors unlocked(you may remember in a back POST that a man in a car could unlock your front door lock which one may operate from the SMART phone as does your house devices can as well----all that seems so wonderful has its down sides----its up to us, you, me to decide which and what our futures may be and for future generations.
(In a back POST some Swedish folk having a party over one them having an implant-----do you want one---- Microchip technology is getting under the skin of thousands of Swedes. ... Thousands of Swedes now use the technology, attending "implant parties" to have chips inserted to replace their gym cards, national IDs and even train tickets.21 Feb 2019



BE CHIP FREE AND BE WELL

GEOFF


ADDENDUM



Thank you Netherlands you are brilliant, may your energy assist to awaken many to this awful technology. You have such great ideas, especially about food as in back POSTS and that genius Wim Hoff.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/

  https://www.pollacklab.org/lab
Professor Pollack ----absolutely brilliant  about 4th phase of water.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/15/ex-google-worker-fears-killer-robots-cause-mass-atrocities
How would you like Atlas coming after you?
Terminator?
Now robot and what could happen.
Just explore there are more----if you dare?


 Just shows that our origins are not always so exact and obvious, what other mysterious DNA findings are in the offering----there have many other findings about the Polynesian and other nations ethnic peoples.

 MY NDE EXPERIENCE IN 1942-----THIS EXPERIENCE INSPIRED ALL MY WRITINGS THAT IS all my POSTS AND BLOGS and I also had hair.
Furthermore it aroused my curiosity as to who was I in this 'dream, fantasy or was it a reality', the proof of life after death and then led me to investigate religions, philosophies, Quantum 'stuff', this then led to the next step Sensei's and Sifu's, meditation, Judo, Aikido, Kendo,Karate, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Kung Fu Football career no go, cricket career no go, electrician no go, Forensics yes, Science and degrees yes, workshop presentations and clinical psychotherapy and counselling with healing sessions yes, married for twelve years, no children and still the search for who am I as in 'SHACK Writings' the huge step in 1967 and a download of writings brought about at the Samye Ling Monastery in Southern Scotland and as a result lecturing, workshops and the Archives, Blogs and POSTS. 
Result no identity, no reality just shifting sands and a witness to life. The witness was in the NDE and that is why there was no corporeal body, the witness was still clouded by some past life / lives and was sent back to Earth to clear the personalities of unfinished business.     

Friday, 13 September 2019

POST 379 SOUND AND VIBRATION

Hello. Many years back I researched sound, light and energy healing and medicine and now I am  glad to see that many professionals are taking the early works of scientists forward in a conference named BodyElectric -Summit in October 2019, which is the title of one of the books I read and the work of Dr Popp https://www.biontologyarizona.com/dr-fritz-albert-popp/ and Korotov(https://www.korotkov.eu/light-consciousness-seeing-beyond-the-physical/  (he will not be at this conference) Dr Popp's protege will be)
A great scientist 
Absolutely Brilliant---A new study by the University of Alaska
It's a shame that they had to wait eighteen years for the above to arrive, although there have been countless engineers, firemen, reporters and scientists saying the same as the above and more. A personal reflection; I do not feel that Saudi Arabia were the culprits, I say this because should it be officially proved it was a controlled explosion, the planting of the explosives and the computer timing sequences would have to been done and it requires access to the buildings for lengthy times and if it were done by V shaped cuts to strategic pillars a lot of noise would have to been around, it could be done under the pretence of structural repairs, refurbishment and reconstruction. The importance of building 7 and its contents can be found in this link;  
https://www.ft.com/content/7d174b42-31fa-11dd-9b87-0000779fd2ac
General Wesley Clark. Retired 4-star U.S. Army general, Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the 1999 War on Yugoslavia .

Complete Transcript of Program, Democracy Now.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-countries-in-5-years-iraq-syria-lebanon-libya-somalia-sudan-iran/5166
The  9/11 event gave carte blanche to the USA  to carry out what General Wesley Clark stated above and if President Trump had not sacked John Bolton just this month of September 2019 Iran might have been on the list next. Mr Trump wants out of Afghanistan, Syria and seeking peaceful trading with others. We shall see.
Then there is the mystery of no aircraft parts found on the grounds at 9/11 Pentagon attack only a large hole. There is a suggestion that a rocket was fired and the mysterious outage of the CCTV as coincidentally(?) the same as in the London Kings Cross Underground attack and buses on June 7 2005 the sort of 9/11 in the UK, incidentally the CCTV was out that day and the same firm that installed it at 9/11 installed the Kings Cross installation and it was an Israeli firm. There was at the Kings Cross incident lots of mistakes made in timing, train timetables and the driver of the train who was not aloud to give evidence as the terrorists boarded a train at Luton to come to London and so on.  The original videos in my archives are gone.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jun/27/july7.uksecurity

http://911blogger.com/news/2007-07-26/journal-911-studies-why-did-world’s-most-advanced-electronics-warfare-plane-circle-over-white-house-911
So what was that plane doing?
I  AM PRINTING ALL OF THE TRANSCRIPT BECAUSE OF THE DE PLATFORMING AND REMOVING YOU TUBE VIDEOS WITH POLITICAL CORRECTNESS;
AMY GOODMAN: Today, an exclusive hour with General Wesley Clark, the retired four-star general. He was Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the Kosovo War. He has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2004, he unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. He recently edited a series of books about famous US generals, including Dwight Eisenhower and Ulysses Grant, both of whom became president after their military careers ended.
On Tuesday, I interviewed Wesley Clark at the 92nd Street Y Cultural Center here in New York City before a live audience and asked him about his presidential ambitions.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of these generals who run for president?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I like them. It’s happened before.
AMY GOODMAN: Will it happen again?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: It might.
AMY GOODMAN: Later in the interview, I followed up on that question.
AMY GOODMAN: Will you announce for president?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I haven’t said I won’t.
AMY GOODMAN: What are you waiting for?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I’m waiting for several different preconditions, which I’m not at liberty to discuss. But I will tell you this: I think about it every single day.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for the rest of the hour, we’ll hear General Wesley Clark in his own words on the possibility of a US attack on Iran; the impeachment of President Bush; the use of cluster bombs; the bombing of Radio Television Serbia during the Kosovo War under his command; and much more. I interviewed General Clark on Tuesday at the 92nd Street Y in New York.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, let’s talk about Iran. You have a whole website devoted to stopping war.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Www.stopiranwar.com.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you see a replay in what happened in the lead-up to the war with Iraq — the allegations of the weapons of mass destruction, the media leaping onto the bandwagon?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, in a way. But, you know, history doesn’t repeat itself exactly twice. What I did warn about when I testified in front of Congress in 2002, I said if you want to worry about a state, it shouldn’t be Iraq, it should be Iran. But this government, our administration, wanted to worry about Iraq, not Iran.
I knew why, 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!”
AMY GOODMAN: I’m sorry. What did you say his name was?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I’m not going to give you his name.
AMY GOODMAN: So, go through the countries again.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon, then Libya, then Somalia and Sudan, and back to Iran. So when you look at Iran, you say, “Is it 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 Baathists. They couldn’t handle them. We 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, and they’ve got a long and unprotectable, unsecurable border. So it was in their vital interest to be deeply involved inside Iraq. They tolerated our attacks on the Baathists. 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, in part because they don’t want to pay the price with their domestic — our US domestic political base, the rightwing 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, and we’ve asked congress to appropriate $75 million 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 and 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.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get your response to Seymour Hersh’s piece in The New Yorker to two key points this week, reporting the Pentagon’s established a special planning group within the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to plan a bombing attack on Iran, 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 and then with US money not approved by Congress, funding the Sunnis connected to al-Qaeda.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I don’t have any direct information to confirm it or deny it. It’s certainly plausible. The Saudis have taken a more active role. You know, the Saudis have —
AMY GOODMAN: You were just in Saudi Arabia.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Hmm?
AMY GOODMAN: You just came back from Saudi Arabia.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: 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 they’re trying to take matters into their own hands.
The real danger is, and one of the reasons this is so complicated is because — let’s say we did follow the desires of some people who say, “Just pull out, and pull out now.” Well, yeah. 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 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 going to find? Al-Qaeda, because the groups of Sunnis who would be extremists 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 onto a toehold inside Iraq and block Iranian expansionism.
AMY GOODMAN: And interestingly, today, John Negroponte has just become the number two man, resigning his post as National Intelligence Director to go to the State Department, Seymour Hersh says, because of his discomfort that the administration’s covert actions in the Middle East so closely echo the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, and Negroponte was involved with that.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I’m sure there are a lot of reasons why John would go back to the State Department. John’s a good — he’s a good man. But, you know, the question is, in government is, can you — are you bigger than your job? Because if you’re not bigger than your job, you get trapped by the pressures of events and processes into going along with actions that you know you shouldn’t. And I don’t know. I don’t know why he left the National Intelligence Director’s position. He started in the State Department. Maybe he’s got a fondness to return and finish off his career in State.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about — do you know who the generals are, who are threatening to resign if the United States attacks Iran?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: No, I don’t. No, I don’t. And I don’t want to know.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you agree with them?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I’ll put it this way. On Labor Day weekend of 1994, when I was the J5 — I was a three-star general. I was in the Pentagon. And it was a Saturday morning, and so I was in the office. Walt Kross was the director of the Joint Staff, and he was in the office. And I think it was either Howell Estes or Jack Sheehan who was the J3 at the time. The three of us — I think it was Jack still on the job for the last couple of days. And the three of us were in Shalikashvili’s office about 11:00 in the morning on a Saturday morning, and he had just come back from a White House meeting. And he was all fired up in the way that Shali could be. And he said, “So,” he said, “we will see who will be the real soldiers this weekend! There’s much work to be done! This operation on Haiti has to be completed! The planning must be done correctly, and it must be done this weekend! So we will see who are the real soldiers!”
Then the phone buzzed, and he got up from this little round table the four of us were sitting at to take the call from the White House. We started looking at each other. We said, “Gosh, I wonder where this came from.” I mean, we were all getting ready to check out of the building in an hour or so. We had finished off the messages and paperwork. And we just usually got together because there was normally a crisis every Saturday anyway, and so we normally would come in for the Saturday morning crisis. And so, Shali came back, and so I said to him, I said, “Well, sir, we’ve been talking amongst ourselves, and we’re happy to work all weekend to get all this done, but this is just a drill, right, on Haiti?”
He looked at me, and he said, “Wes,” he said, “this is no drill.” He said, “I’m not authorized to tell you this. But,” he said “the decision has been made, and the United States will invade Haiti. The date is the 20th” — I think it was this date — “of the 20th of September. And the planning must be done, and it must be done now. And if any of you have reservations about this, this is the time to leave.” So I looked at Jack, and I looked at Walt. They looked at me. I mean, we kind of shrugged our shoulders and said, “OK, if you want to invade Haiti, I mean, it’s not illegal. It’s not the country we’d most like to invade. The opposition there consists of five armored vehicles. But sure, I mean, if the President says to do it, yeah, we’re not going resign over it.” And so, we didn’t resign. Nobody resigned.
But Shali was a very smart man. He knew. He knew he was bigger than his job, and he knew that you had to ask yourself the moral, legal and ethical questions first. And so, I’m encouraged by the fact that some of these generals have said this about Iran. They should be asking these questions first.
AMY GOODMAN: General Wesley Clark. He says he thinks about running for president again every day. We’ll come back to my interview with him in a minute.
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AMY GOODMAN: We go back to my interview with General Wesley Clark.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the soldiers who are saying no to going to Iraq right now?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Iraq?
AMY GOODMAN: To going to Iraq. People like First Lieutenant Ehren Watada, first commissioned officer to say no to deploy. And they just declared a mistrial in his court-martial. He will face another court-martial in a few weeks. What do you think of these young men and women — there are now thousands — who are refusing? But, for example, Ehren Watada, who says he feels it’s wrong. He feels it’s illegal and immoral, and he doesn’t want to lead men and women there.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think, you know, he’s certainly made a personally courageous statement. And he’ll pay with the consequences of it.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think he should have to go to jail for that?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think that you have to have an effective armed forces. And I think that it’s not up to the men and women in the Armed Forces to choose where they’ll go to war, because at the very time you need the Armed Forces the most is — there will be a certain number of people who will see it the other way. And so, I support his right to refuse to go, and I support the government’s effort to bring charges against him. This is the way the system works.
Now, the difference is, the case that I described with Shalikashvili is, we would have been given the chance to retire. We would have left our jobs. We might not have retired as three-star generals, because we hadn’t done our duty. But we weren’t in the same circumstance that he is, so there wasn’t necessarily going to be charges brought against us.
But an armed forces has to have discipline. It’s a voluntary organization to join. But it’s not voluntary unless it’s illegal. And you can bring — the trouble with Iraq is it’s not illegal. It was authorized by the United States Congress. It was authorized by the United Nations Security Council resolution. It’s an illegitimate war, but not an illegal war.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think it’s wrong?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: It’s wrong to fight in Iraq? Well, I think it’s a mistake. I think it’s a bad strategy. I think it’s brought us a lot of grief, and it will bring us a lot more grief. I think it’s been a tremendous distraction from the war on terror, a diversion of resources, and it’s reinforced our enemies. But on the other hand, his case is a moral case, not a legal case. And if you’re going to be a conscientious objector morally like this, then what makes it commendable is that you’ll take your stand on principle and pay the price. If there’s no price to be paid for it, then the courage of your act isn’t self-evident. So he’s taken a very personally courageous stand. But on the other hand, you have to also appreciate the fact that the Armed Forces has to be able to function.
So, you know, in World War I in France, there were a series of terribly misplaced offensives, and they brought — they failed again and again and again. The French took incredible losses. And these were conscript armies. And after one of these failures, a group of thousands of soldiers simply said, “We’re not doing this again. It’s wrong.” You know what the French did? They did what they call decimation. They lined up the troops. They took every tenth soldier, and they shot them. Now, the general who ordered that, he suffered some severe repercussions, personally, morally, but after that the soldiers in France didn’t disobey. Had the army disintegrated at that point, Germany would have occupied France. So when you’re dealing with the use of force, there is an element of compulsion in the Armed Forces.
AMY GOODMAN: But if the politicians will not stop it — as you pointed out, the Democrats joined with the Republicans in authorizing the war — then it’s quite significant, I think, that you, as a general, are saying that this man has taken a courageous act. Then it’s up to the people who are being sent to go to say no.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Yeah. But the courage that we need is not his courage. We need the courage of the leaders in the United States government: the generals who could affect the policy, the people in Congress who could force the President to change his strategy. That’s the current — that’s the courage that’s needed.
AMY GOODMAN: And how could they do that?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, you start with a non-binding resolution in the United States Congress, and you build your momentum from there. And you keep hammering it. The Congress has three principal powers. It has the power to appoint, power to investigate, power to fund. And you go after all three. On all three fronts, you find out what the President needs, until he takes it seriously. I think it’s a difficult maneuver to use a scalpel and say, “Well, we’re going to support funding, but we’re not going to support funding for the surge,” because that’s requiring a degree of micro-management that Congress can’t do.
But you can certainly put enough squeeze on the President that he finally calls in the leaders of the Congress and says, “OK, OK, what’s it going to take? I’ve got to get my White House budget passed. I’ve got to get thirty judges, federal judges, confirmed. I’ve got to get these federal prosecutors — you know, the ones that I caused to resign so I could handle it — they’ve got to get replacements in place. What do I have to do to get some support here?” I mean, it could be done. It’s hard bare-knuckle government.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think Congress should stop funding the war?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I think Congress should take a strong stand to get the strategy changed. I don’t think that if you cut off funding for the war, it’s in the — right now that’s not in the United States’ interest. What is in the United States’ interest is to change the strategy in the war. You cannot succeed by simply stopping the funding and saying, “You’ve got six months to get the Americans out.” That’s not going to end the misery in Iraq. It’s not going to restore the lives that have been lost. And it’s not going to give us the power in the region to prevent later threats.
What we do have to do is have a strategy that uses all the elements of America’s power: diplomatic, economic, legal and military. I would send a high-level diplomatic team into the region right now. I’d have no-holds-barred and no-preconditioned discussion with Iran and Syria. And I would let it be known that I’ve got in my bag all the tricks, including putting another 50,000 troops in Iraq and pulling all 150,000 troops out. And we’re going to reach an agreement on a statement of principles that brings stability and peace and order to the region. So let’s just sit down and start doing it. Now, that could be done with the right administrative leadership. It just hasn’t been done.
You know, think of it this way. You’re on a ship crossing the Atlantic. It’s a new ship. And it’s at night. And you’re looking out ahead of the ship, and you notice that there’s a part of the horizon. It’s a beautiful, starry night, except that there’s a part of the horizon, a sort of a regular hump out there where there are no stars visible. And you notice, as the ship plows through the water at thirty knots, that this area where there are no stars is getting larger. And finally, it hits you that there must be something out there that’s blocking the starlight, like an iceberg. So you run to the captain. And you say, “Captain, captain, there’s an iceberg, and we’re driving right toward it.” And he says, “Look, I can’t be bothered with the iceberg right now. We’re having an argument about the number of deck chairs on the fore deck versus the aft deck.” And you say, “But you’re going to hit an iceberg.” He says, “I’m sorry. Get out of here.” So you go to the first officer, and he says, “I’m fighting with the captain on the number of deck chairs.”
You know, we’re approaching an iceberg in the Middle East in our policy, and we’ve got Congress and the United States — and the President of the United States fighting over troop strength in Iraq. It’s the wrong issue. The issue is the strategy, not the troop strength.
AMY GOODMAN: General Clark, do you think Guantanamo Bay should be closed?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: If Congress cut off funds for the prison there, it would be closed. Should they?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think the first thing Congress should do is repeal the Military Commissions Act. I’m very disturbed that a number of people who are looking at the highest office in the land have supported an act which advertently or inadvertently authorizes the admission into evidence of information gained through torture. That’s not the America that I believe in. And the America that I believe in doesn’t detain people indefinitely without charges. So I’d start with the Military Commissions Act.
Then I’d get our NATO allies into the act. They’ve said they don’t like Guantanamo either. So I’d like to create an international tribunal, not a kangaroo court of military commissions. And let’s go back through the evidence. And let’s lay it out. Who are these people that have been held down there? And what have they been held for? And which ones can be released? And which ones should be tried in court and convicted?
You see, essentially, you cannot win the war on terror by military force. It is first and foremost a battle of ideas. It is secondly a law enforcement effort and a cooperative effort among nations. And only as a last resort do you use military force. This president has distorted the capabilities of the United States Armed Forces. He’s used our men and women in uniform improperly in Guantanamo and engaged in actions that I think are totally against the Uniform Code of Military Justice and against what we stand for as the American people.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that President Bush should be impeached?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think we ought to do first thing’s first, which is, we really need to understand and finish the job that Congress started with respect to the Iraq war investigation. Do you remember that there was going to be a study released by the Senate, that the senator from Iowa or from Kansas who was the Republican head of the Senate Intelligence Committee was going to do this study to determine whether the administration had, in fact, misused the intelligence information to mislead us into the war with Iraq? Well, I’ve never seen that study. I’d like to know where that study is. I’d like to know why we’ve spent three years investigating Scooter Libby, when we should have been investigating why this country went to war in Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed a complaint against Donald Rumsfeld, General Miller and others in a German court, because they have universal jurisdiction. Do you think that Donald Rumsfeld should be tried for war crimes?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I’d like to see what the evidence is against Rumsfeld. I do know this, that there was a lot of pressure put on the men and women in uniform to come up with intelligence. I remember — I think it was either General Sanchez or General Abizaid, who stated that we don’t need more troops — this is the fall of 2003 — we just need better information. Well, to me, that was immediate code words that we were really trying to soak these people for information.
And it’s only a short step from there to all the kinds of mistreatment that occur at places like Abu Ghraib. So we know that Al Gonzales wrote a couple of really — or authored, or his people authored and he approved, a couple of outrageous memos that attempted to define torture as deliberately inflicted pain, the equivalent of the loss of a major bodily organ or limb, which is — it’s not an adequate definition of torture. And we know that he authorized, to some degree, some coercive methods, which we have — and we know President Bush himself accepted implicitly in a signing statement to a 2005 act on military detainees that he would use whatever methods were appropriate or necessary. So there’s been some official condoning of these actions.
I think it’s a violation of international law and a violation of American law and a violation of the principles of good government in America. There have always been evidences of mistreatment of prisoners. Every army has probably done it in history. But our country hasn’t ever done it as a matter of deliberate policy. George Washington told his soldiers, when they captured the Hessians and the men wanted to run them through, because the Hessians were brutal and ruthless, he said, “No, treat them well.” He said, “They’ll join our side.” And many of them did. It was a smart policy, not only the right thing to do, but a smart policy to treat the enemy well. We’ve made countless enemies in that part of the world by the way we’ve treated people and disregarded them. It’s bad, bad policy.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask — you’re a FOX News contributor now?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Oh, at least.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you what you think of the dean of West Point, Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, together with a military interrogator named Tony Lagouranis and the group Human Rights First, going to the heads of the program 24, very popular hit show on FOX, to tell them that what they’re doing on this program, glorifying torture, is inspiring young men and women to go to Iraq and torture soldiers there, and to stop it?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: And not only that, but it doesn’t work. Yeah, Pat Finnegan is one of my heroes.
AMY GOODMAN: So what do you think about that?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I think it’s great.
AMY GOODMAN: And have you been involved in the conversation internally at FOX, which runs 24, to stop it?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, as far as I know, they actually put out a call to all the writers in Hollywood. My son’s a writer, and he was one of them who got a call. They were all told: stop talking about torture. It doesn’t work. So I think it was an effective move by Pat Finnegan.
AMY GOODMAN: So you support it?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: General Wesley Clark. I’m interviewing him at the 92nd Street Y. We’re going to come back to the conclusion of that interview in a minute.
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AMY GOODMAN: General Wesley Clark recently edited a series of books about famous US generals: Grant, LeMay, Patton and Eisenhower. When I interviewed him at the 92nd Street Y, I asked him a question about the presidency of General Dwight Eisenhower
AMY GOODMAN: 1953 was also a seminal date for today, and that was when Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, went to Iran and led a coup against Mohammed Mossadegh under Eisenhower.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: People make mistakes. And one of the mistakes that the United States consistently made was that it could intervene and somehow adjust people’s governments, especially in the Middle East. I don’t know why we felt that — you can understand Latin America, because Latin America was always an area in which people would come to the United States, say, “You’ve got to help us down there. These are banditos, and they don’t know anything. And, you know, they don’t have a government. Just intervene and save our property.” And the United States did it a lot in the ’20s. Of course, Eisenhower was part of that culture. He had seen it.
But in the Middle East, we had never been there. We established a relationship during World War II, of course, to keep the Germans out of Iran. And so, the Soviets and the Brits put an Allied mission together. At the end of World War II, the Soviets didn’t want to withdraw, and Truman called their bluff in the United Nations. And Eisenhower knew all of this. And Iran somehow became incorporated into the American defense perimeter. And so, his view would have been, we couldn’t allow a communist to take over.
AMY GOODMAN: But wasn’t it more about British Petroleum?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Oh, it’s always — there are always interests. The truth is, about the Middle East is, had there been no oil there, it would be like Africa. Nobody is threatening to intervene in Africa. The problem is the opposite. We keep asking for people to intervene and stop it. There’s no question that the presence of petroleum throughout the region has sparked great power involvement. Whether that was the specific motivation for the coup or not, I can’t tell you. But there was definitely — there’s always been this attitude that somehow we could intervene and use force in the region. I mean, that was true with — I mean, imagine us arming and creating the Mujahideen to keep the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Why would we think we could do that? But we did. And, you know, my lesson on it is, whenever you use force, there are unintended consequences, so you should use force as a last resort. Whether it’s overt or covert, you pay enormous consequences for using force.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about what you think of the response to Jimmy Carter’s book, Peace, Not Apartheid.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I’m sorry to say I haven’t read the book. And it’s one of the things I’ve been meaning to read, and I just haven’t. I will tell you this, that we’re in a very, very difficult position in Israel. I say “we,” because every American president has committed to the protection and survival of the state of Israel. And I think that’s right. And I certainly feel that way, and I’m a very strong supporter of Israel.
But somehow we’ve got to move off top dead center in terms of these discussions with the Palestinians. And this administration has failed to lead. They came into office basically determined not to do anything that Bill Clinton did. I think that was the basic guideline. And so, they have allowed unremitting violence between Israel and the Palestinians with hardly an effort to stop that through US leadership. And now, it’s almost too late. So Condi was over there the other day, and she didn’t achieve what she wanted to achieve, and people want to blame the Saudis. But at least the Saudis tried to do something at Mecca by putting together a unity government. So I fault the administration.
Jimmy Carter has taken a lot of heat from people. I don’t know exactly what he said in the book. But people are very sensitive about Israel in this country. And I understand that. A lot of my friends have explained it to me and have explained to me the psychology of people who were in this country and saw what was happening in World War II, and maybe they didn’t feel like they spoke out strongly enough, soon enough, to stop it. And it’s not going to happen again.
AMY GOODMAN: General Clark, I wanted to ask you a tough question about journalists.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, now, that would be the first tough question you’ve asked me tonight.
AMY GOODMAN: There are more than a hundred journalists and media workers in Iraq who have died. And particularly hard hit are Arab journalists. I mean, you had Tariq Ayoub, the Al Jazeera reporter, who died on the roof of Al Jazeera when the US military shelled Al Jazeera, then went on to shell the Palestine Hotel and killed two reporters, a Reuters cameraman and one from Telecinco in Spain named Jose Couso. Many Arab journalists feel like they have been targeted, the idea of shooting the messenger. But this tough question goes back to your being Supreme Allied Commander in Yugoslavia and the bombing of Radio Television Serbia. Do you regret that that happened, that you did that?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: No, I don’t regret that at all. That was part of the Serb command and control network. And not only that, I was asked to take out that television by a lot of important political leaders. And before I took it out, I twice warned the Serbs we were going to take it out. We stopped, at one news conference in the Pentagon, we planted the question to get the attention of the Serbs, that we were going to target Serb Radio and Television.
AMY GOODMAN: RTS.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Yeah. And that night, in fact, Milosevic got the warning, because he summoned all the foreign journalists to come to a special mandatory party at RTS that night. But we weren’t bombing that night. We put the word out twice before we actually I did it.
AMY GOODMAN: You told CNN, which was also there, to leave?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I told — I used — I think I used CNN to plant the story and to leak it at the Pentagon press conference. But we didn’t tell anyone specifically to leave. What we told them was it’s now a target. And it was Milosevic who determined that he would keep people there in the middle of the night just so there would be someone killed if we struck it. So we struck it during the hours where there were not supposed to be anybody there.
AMY GOODMAN: But you killed civilians.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Six people died.
AMY GOODMAN: I think sixteen. But I think it’s the media — it’s the beauticians, the technicians. It was a civilian target.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Yeah, they were ordered to stay there by Milosevic. Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: But it was a civilian target.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: It was not a civilian target. It was a military target. It was part of the Serb command and control network
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of Amnesty International calling it a war crime?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think it was investigated by the International Criminal Tribunal in Yugoslavia and found to be a legitimate target. So I think it’s perfectly alright for Amnesty International to have their say, but everything we did was approved by lawyers, and every target was blessed. We would not have committed a war crime.
AMY GOODMAN: Upon reflection now and knowing who died there, the young people, the people who worked for RTS, who — as you said, if Milosevic wanted people to stay there, they were just following orders.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, it was a tragedy. But I’ll tell you something. If you want to talk about tragedies, how about this one? We bombed what we thought was a Serb police station in Kosovo. We saw the Serb vehicles. We flew unmanned aerial vehicles over it. And we did everything we could to identify it. And we found that there were Serb police vehicles parked there at night, so we sent an F-16 in, dropped two 500-pound laser-guided bombs and took it out. We killed eighty Albanians who had been imprisoned by the Serbs there. They were trying to escape, and the Serbs locked them up in this farmhouse and surrounded them with vehicles. So, I regret every single innocent person who died, and I prayed every night that there wouldn’t be any innocent people who died. But this is why I say you must use force only as a last resort.
I told this story to the high school kids earlier, but it bears repeating, I guess. We had a malfunction with a cluster bomb unit, and a couple of grenades fell on a schoolyard, and some, I think three, schoolchildren were killed in Nish. And two weeks later, I got a letter from a Serb grandfather. He said, “You’ve killed my granddaughter.” He said, “I hate you for this, and I’ll kill you.” And I got this in the middle of the war. And it made me very, very sad. We certainly never wanted to do anything like that. But in war, accidents happen. And that’s why you shouldn’t undertake military operations unless every other alternative has been exhausted, because innocent people do die. And I think the United States military was as humane and careful as it possibly could have been in the Kosovo campaign. But still, civilians died. And I’ll always regret that.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think cluster bombs should be banned?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: You know, we used, I think 1,400-plus cluster bombs. And there’s a time when you have to use cluster bombs: when they’re the most appropriate and humane weapon. But I think you have to control the use very carefully. And I think we did in Yugoslavia.
AMY GOODMAN: Right now, the US has rejected an international call to ban the use of cluster bombs. On Friday, forty-six countries were in Oslo to develop a new international treaty to ban the use of cluster munitions by — I think it’s 2008. Would you support that?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, you know, people who are against war often make the case by trying to attack the weapons of war and stripping away the legitimacy of those weapons. I’ve participated in some of that. I’d like to get rid of landmines. I did participate in getting rid of laser blinding weapons. And I was part of the team that put together the agreement that got rid of laser blinding weapons. I’d like to get rid of nuclear weapons. But I can’t agree with those who say that force has no place in international affairs. It simply does for this country. And I would like to work to make it so that it doesn’t. But the truth is, for now it does. And so, I can’t go against giving our men and women in uniform the appropriate weapons they need to fight, to fight effectively to succeed on the battlefield, and to minimize their own casualties.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’ll have to leave it there. I thank you very much, General Wesley Clark.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: General Wesley Clark. I interviewed him at the 92nd Street Y, the cultural center here in New York, on the publication of the Great General Series, on Grant, LeMay, Patton and Eisenhower.
Courtesy to Democracy Now and General Wesley Clark and Amy Goodman (my site is free and I do not accept donations, advertising or make money or profit from it)

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Geoff