Wesley Clark Quotations

One of the things I learned in the military is sometimes you don't know what mistakes you make for a long time. But as you go through a campaign, there's lots of decision points you make, and you don't know whether those are gonna be the right decision points or not.

For the United States to be a global leader, we have to have a very tight relationship with Europe. And we've held that relationship since 1949 when we established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO. NATO is the bond. It's a security bond.

The purpose of the European Union expansion is to bring stability to the East, and ultimately, that stability will come to Russia. There is no long term reason that Russia can't be part of the same peaceful community of nations.

My mother told me once that she and my father agreed that I would not be brought up Jewish in Chicago. She had me going to a Methodist church.

George W. Bush has helped those who have most, hurt those who have least and ignored everyone in between.

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.

When Bill Clinton ran in '92, and I listened to him, and I had of course known of his record from Arkansas, I found him extraordinarily inspirational, and I voted Democratic.

What I learned in the military is that gossip starts early and it stays forever.

I said the rosary, and I said the Our Father, as they call it in the Catholic Church. One of the things I learned in the conversion process was to say the rosary, and I had a set of rosary beads. So I said 'Hail Mary, full of grace.'

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.

Veterans have had a long record of leaning towards the Republican Party. I think that's changing. I think that President Obama has the strongest record with veterans among any president in my lifetime.

You have to be true to what you believe in and do your duty.

I think we're at risk with our democracy. I think we're dealing with the most closed, imperialistic, nastiest administration in living memory. They even put Richard Nixon to shame.

I remember in the spring of 1971, a hundred thousand people converged on the Pentagon in June of 1971. They threw blood; I guess it was goat's blood or something, on the steps to the Pentagon. People were being accused of being murderers and baby killers. You just can't imagine the civic outrage.

Slobodan Milosevic was just as smart as a five-year-old. Five-year-olds have an uncanny way of getting into your psyche, your self-esteem.

As president of the United States, my top priority will be to keep America safe. We're going to go after the terrorist networks. We're going to go after Osama bin Laden. We are not going to live in fear in this country.

Europe and America must act together in the face of evil. It's high time for Americans and Europeans to restore that unity and be able to take actions collectively together.

Everybody in the military has a reputation, and usually it doesn't come out to the public.

I like Hilary Clinton. I think she's - she's a fantastic leader.

I worked for the troops my entire time in the United States Armed Forces because we know in the United States Armed Forces that it's not the generals and the colonels that win battles, it's the soldiers: it's the people at the front, the mechanics with their wrenches, the drivers moving the logistics back in the rear.

In my experience, in bringing coercive diplomacy to bear against Slobodan Milosevic, no bomb strike was more important than maintaining NATO's cohesion.

China invaded India, and there was a war between India and China in some of the disputed terrain in 1962, and India got hurt by that.

The Ukrainians don't have the military means to stand up to Russia, but we haven't helped them militarily, either.

Next to upholding the Constitution of the United States, the president's highest duty is to protect the security of this country - our national security.

Ukraine is a big country. It is 45-46 million people. It has got a lot of modern industry; it also has a lot of very key resources. There is no reason for it not to be one of the leading countries of Europe.

A commander in chief with military experience might be able to prod a conservative military into thinking more imaginatively.

No administration has the right to tell Americans that to dissent is disloyal and to disagree is unpatriotic.

More than half the American people now believe that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, ... They're right. But it would also be a mistake to pull out now, or to start pulling out or to set a date certain for pulling out. Instead we need a strategy to create a stable, democratizing and peaceful state in Iraq - a strategy the administration has failed to develop and articulate.

When we started after Osama bin Laden, we really decided to go after the Taliban. And we seemed to be content to kick the Taliban out of Kandahar. And then we let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora.

When you raise the alert level, you've got to do it in a way that you're explaining and laying out as much as you can about why it is that you're doing it, what you hope to achieve from it, ... Late Edition.

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.

Here, someone actually shoved me out the way to get to my own fund-raiser, and no it wasn't Al Gore, ... Actually there is only one endorsement I care about, and it's from all of you.

He couldn't dump the bomb at that point. It was locked. It was going to the target and it was an unfortunate incident we all regret. We certainly don't want to do collateral damage. The mission was to take out the bridge. He realized when it had happened that he had not hit the bridge, that what he had hit was the train.

I always said I would vote for a resolution that gave the president the leverage to go to the United Nations, and then come back to the Congress for the authority to go to force.

He had a well-organized plan and he pursued it in a criminal and certainly an inhumane and tragic manner. And now that everybody is on the ground here, we're finding more and more evidence of this.

He's going to run on the idea that he's the commander-in-chief, that it's about his patriotism, that he kept us safe after 9/11, ... The time has passed in America when this party can be the party of compassion and let the executive branch run foreign policy.

He should be fired. When someone makes comments like that, that are so obviously racially prejudiced. We don't tolerate that in modern American society. We certainly didn't tolerate it in the U.S. Army and we don't tolerate it here. It's wrong.

He's firing it, lobbing it, across those mountains, indiscriminately targeting civilians in Albania,

My opponents on the inside have said that the American people shouldn't hold them responsible for everything that happens because we don't understand how things work in Washington,

Staying the course is not a strategy, it is just a slogan,

Staying the course is not a strategy, it is just a slogan. ... We have a long way to go before victory, or at least some measure of success, is assured.

Our men and women fighting in Iraq are held accountable for their performance and their conduct. On duty and off, twenty-four hours a day. They're fighting for us, for our safety, our rights, and our freedoms.

I think what you have to understand about the armed forces, ... it's a competitive bureaucracy. People enter it at the bottom and they come out at the top. There's a lot of gossip. There are some sharp elbows in there,

It is definitely succeeding in putting the pressure on at the strategic and at the tactical level,

I think the evidence of the mass graves is confirmation of the terrible wrong done here.

I will strengthen them so that we can solve problems together, so that the use of military force is our last resort, not our first, and if America must act with force we can call on the military, financial, and moral resources of others.

I think his disadvantage is that he doesn't seem to know who he is and he doesn't know what his policies are.

Just looking at the environment, the breakdown in Iraqi defense system, and the fact that we're in there in that urban area, we're not a good target for the use of chemical weapons even if Saddam could throw them at us, and I think the guess would be he can't at this point,

I think it's great if individuals invest in the stock market, but not as a substitute for insuring the solvency of Social Security.

The American public should simply accept no distractions. In our democracy, it is our duty to hold our elected leaders accountable. We do it at the ballot box.

You can buy as much TV as you want in New Hampshire, and we'll certainly do our share, but there's no substitute for being up there. People really want a candidate who's going to talk about them, not about his opponents, not about George W. Bush. You'll see a lot of these conversations Clark is having are about them,

We are watching with increased concern the spiral of violence as a result of what appear to be deliberate Serb decisions to move ahead toward a military solution

We're bringing in addition reconnaissance means and others, and I think we are having an effect, ... As I said in Washington a couple of days ago, we're winning, Milosevic is losing, and he knows it.

We've seen a continuing build up of artillery in the western part of Kosovo so he can shell into Albania...he's hitting civilians,

We were ... not surprised but disappointed by the very stubborn and obdurate reaction we encountered in Belgrade,

The positive and negative indications right now are that Milosevic has made a half compromise and he is still defying the will of the international community on other issues,

We feel that NATO had to act as it did,

We're in there without a strategy to win, and without a strategy to exit properly, and now the president's asked for $87 billion to prosecute it,

We know we will be able to work this out, as soldiers always do,

Turkey's a NATO member. If Turkey gets attacked, we have to help defend Turkey.

As the pilot stared at the aim point, and worked it and worked it and worked it, all of a sudden at the very last minute -- less than a second to go -- he caught a flash of movement that came into the screen and it was the train,

We've hit at his power plants because they're essential to running every part of his military machine, ... and this has proven to be effective.

and we're working now to see that they're deployed within an effective and unified chain of command.

We're very concerned about the safety and welfare of the three soldiers, ... We've all seen their pictures. We don't like it. We don't like the way they were treated, and we have a long memory.

before I made the decision to run. ... I said I'm not really not interested in even talking about it.

We have decided we are going to end this phase of the journey even more full of hope and even more committed to building a better America,

So this is the end of the campaign for the presidency, and it's not the end of the cause. Because the real cause is a campaign for America's future.

Russia and China, when they were communist-like adversaries, they didn't participate. They're participating now in the world with us. They're trading monetary instruments. We're buying and selling goods back and forth, trading oil and so forth.

Europe and America must act together in the face of evil, ... It's high time for Americans and Europeans to restore that unity and be able to take actions collectively together.

I've done more with a better plan for jobs here in eight days than this president's done in two and a half years,

I'm not attacking the president because he is attacking terrorists. I'm attacking him because he's not attacking terrorists.

I'm running to be the president of the United States, not the vice president, and I will not accept that nomination, ... Meet the Press.

Tammy ... woke up without her legs 10 days after a rocket-propelled grenade exploded in her lap as she flew her helicopter.

Once I started first grade, I started going to Emmanuel Baptist Church regularly. I went to Sunday school. We had Bible readings and things like that.

The investigation is continuing in regard to the exact circumstances in which the captured men ended up in Yugoslavia,

It has to be this way, and these people have to be a part of modern Europe. That's what they want to do and I believe they will achieve that status.

His campaign has used this for some time as an effort to kind of buttress his national security flank by saying I might be his running mate,

In the 1950s, Pakistan allied with the United States in something called the Central Treaty Organization. We were lined up with, at that time, Iran, ruled by the Shah, and Pakistan and Turkey as a southward shield against Soviet expansion toward the warm waters of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. It was part of the containment strategy.

calls for pulling back the tax cuts for those Americans that are making $200,000 a year and above, and using that money in a way that will advance our national interest. It's creating jobs. It's focused like a laser beam on job creation.

because I believe in open, honest government, where we hold our leaders accountable.

Gert was always of the mind that she wouldn't go to another church except the Catholic Church. So when I would date her in New York City, and later when we went to Oxford before we got married, we always went to the Catholic church.

It was a pilot flying somewhere in the area that day,

It was a pilot flying somewhere in the area that day who saw something I thought was incredibly powerful as he described it. I saw the whole video tape and we had a picture of the pilot he was pointing it out on the map. I did not want to release it because we had not finished the investigation,

all of a sudden, at the very last instant, he caught a flash of movement.

This is a guy who will fly halfway around the world for a photo opportunity, but he won't (go) halfway across town to honor American servicemen being buried in Arlington National Cemetery,

It's all smoke and mirrors designed to hide the stark fact that he has no real plan for our future,

It's essential to have boots and eyes on the ground.

We certainly don't want to do collateral damage. The mission was to take out the bridge. He realized when it had happened that he had not hit the bridge, that what he hit was the train.

It's a whole set of communities which have been devastated, ... And what you see when you look at this is a widespread systematic pattern of ethnic cleansing. It's a familiar pattern over the last 10 years.

It may take another few days because you have ... small pockets of resistance from place to place,

This is what my expertise, my leadership experience, my whole career has pointed and prepared me for,

He also has his hands still on the sinews of power in Serbia. He controls the army, he controls the police, including a very effective and brutal secret police network, ... He controls the media, and he controls the economy and finances.

all of the operational assets that he requires in terms of extra assets to prosecute the air campaign with maximum effect.

We're going to take out seven countries in 5 years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran

Let's not forget what the origin of the problem is. There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That's a 19th century idea and we are trying to transition into the 21st century, and we are going to do it with multi-ethnic states.

Nothing could be a more serious violation of public trust than to consciously make a war based on false claims.

Well we always need brave, capable young men and women who can run a tactical operation and take risks on the battlefield but you should know when we need you to go in there, that if there's any other way to do it, that we could do this without risking your life, we wouldn't ask you to risk your life.

Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president,

Imagine a world in which we saw beyond the lines that divide us, and celebrated our differences, instead of hiding from them. Imagine a world in which we finally recognized that, fundamentally, we are all the same. And imagine if we allowed that new understanding to build relations between people and between nations.

I'm spiritual. I'm religious. I'm a strong Christian and I'm a Catholic but I go to a Presbyterian Church. Occasionally I go to the Catholic church too. I take communion. I haven't transferred my membership or anything.