[Wesley Clark] About ten days after 9/11 I went to the Pentagon and I saw secretary Rumsfield and Deputy Secretary Wolfweitz.
I went downstairs to see some of the staff who used to work for me and one of the Generals called me in and said “Sir, you have got to come in. Come in, you have got to come in and talk to me a second.”
I said “Well, you’re too busy”.
He said, “No, No, we have made the decision to go to war with Iraq”. This was on or about the 20th of September [2001].
I said “We are going to war with Iraq? Why” [emphasis added].
He said, “I don’t know” [crowd laughs]
He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do”. [crowd boos].
So I said “Well, did they find come information connecting Saddam to Al-Queda?”
He said, “No, No. There is nothing new that way, they just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.”
He said, “I guess its like, we don’t know what to do about terrorists but we have a good military and we can take down governments”
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, its worse than that.”
He reached over on his desk and picked up a piece of paper.
He said, “I just got this down from upstairs from the Secretary of Defense’s office today. This is a memo that describes how we are going to take out 7 countries in 5 years.”
“Starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon. Then Libya, Somalia and Sudan. Then finishing off Iran.”
[Amy Goodman] “Go Through the countries again.” [crowd laughs]
[Wesley Clark] “Well starting off with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon, and Libya, Somalia and Sudan. and back to Iran.”
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