February 2024
Retired US Army General Wesley Clarke addressed an audience on the Neocon war machine.Our transcript and title.
"Seven Countries in 5 Years"
Bombing the World into "Democracy"
About ten days after 9/11 I went through the Pentagon and I saw [Defence] Secretary Rumsfeld, and one of the Generals called me and he said, ‘Sir, you got to come in and talk to me a second’. I said, ‘We are too busy’. He said, ‘No, no’. He says, ‘We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.’ I said, ‘We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?’ He said, ‘I don’t know.’ [audience laughter] He said, ‘I guess they don’t know what else to do’. 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 to do about terrorists, but we 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 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 Defence’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.’ [laughter]. 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!’