CNN: Democratic presidential contender Wesley
Clark said Wednesday that President Bush has shown a
lack of will in pursuing al Qaeda leader Osama bin
Laden. In a blistering critique of the commander in
chief, Clark said that "capturing Saddam Hussein
doesn't change the fact that Osama bin Laden is still
on the loose."
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Clark: Bush lacks will to find bin Laden
Democrat says he would have had the al Qaeda chief by
now
Wednesday, December 17, 2003 Posted: 7:00 PM EST (0000
GMT)
(CNN) -- Democratic presidential contender Wesley
Clark said Wednesday that President Bush has shown a
lack of will in pursuing al Qaeda leader Osama bin
Laden. In a blistering critique of the commander in
chief, Clark said that "capturing Saddam Hussein
doesn't change the fact that Osama bin Laden is still
on the loose."
"If I'd been president, I would have had Osama bin
Laden by this time," Clark said at a news conference
in Concord, New Hampshire, where he was campaigning
for votes in the nation's first primary, January 27.
"I would have followed through on the original
sentiment that the president gave us -- Osama bin
Laden, dead or alive.
"Instead, he executed a bait-and-switch. He took the
priority off Osama bin Laden. He shifted the spotlight
onto Saddam Hussein."
The retired Army four-star general also said that if
Bush questions the patriotism and national security
credentials of Democrats in the coming campaign, he
would not hesitate to match his record against the
president's.
"I'll put my 34 years of defending the United States
of America, and the results that I and my teammates in
the United States armed forces achieved, against his
three years of failed policies any day," said Clark,
who was NATO supreme commander during the 1999 air
campaign in Kosovo.
He added, "We've got a president who will go halfway
around the world for a photo opportunity but won't go
halfway across town for a funeral for an American
serviceman.
"I've been to those funerals. I've comforted families.
... I don't think you can make good policy at the top
if you don't understand the impact at the bottom of
your organization."
Bush has on only two or three occasions met with the
families of fallen servicemen and women, most recently
at Fort Carson, Colorado, and he has not attended
funerals or greeted caskets returning from Iraq.
A senior administration official told The Washington
Post in November, "The president believes funerals are
a time for grieving families to be together and mourn
their loved ones and celebrate their lives, and he has
not felt comfortable intruding on that."
Clark, who returned this week after testifying at the
war crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic in The Hague, Netherlands, weighed in on the
case of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Clark said Saddam should be tried in Iraq, by Iraqis,
under standards drawn up by international experts --
with the death penalty as a potential punishment.
"I think that you cannot take the death penalty off
the table. ... It has to be there, to be applied to
war criminals who've used chemical weapons, to those
responsible for genocide," Clark said.
While congratulating U.S. forces for capturing Saddam
from "that snake hole in the ground," Clark said he
"can't understand why the president hasn't devoted the
same energy and resources to going after al Qaeda that
he did to going after Iraq."
"Right now, having captured Saddam, the right course
for the country is to redirect our energies and
capture Osama bin Laden, now. We've got momentum,
now," he said.
"It's a question of presidential will. If the
president will show the will, I'm confident our armed
forces will find a way to take him."
As president, Clark said he also would "insist that
Saudi Arabia take responsibility" and provide
resources and intelligence to help the United States
get bin Laden, including creating a joint U.S.-Saudi
commando unit to root out terrorists.
He said the United States should put "intense
political pressure" on Pakistan to find bin Laden and
move "substantial" U.S. special operations forces and
intelligence personnel from Iraq into Afghanistan.
To free up those assets, Clark said the United States
should end its "fruitless" hunt for weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq and turn the task over to the
international community.
"I could never understand why we insisted on doing
this anyway, when the international community was
fully willing to participate and do it," he said.
"The experienced U.N. inspectors, who've done it
before ... were champing at the bit, waiting to go
there. We kept them out."
Clark said the hunt could be turned over to
international inspectors because "weapons of mass
destruction are no longer a threat to the United
States, at least not from Iraq. We're there.
"We need to move on -- let the international
inspectors clean out the remnants of this, sort out
the programs, talk to the scientists."