Today the Bush administration, like the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, has no alternative but to resist terrorism and the states that support terrorism. The administration's job is made all the more difficult by the Democratic presidential candidates' cheap shots. The candidates who supported the Iraqi war resolution and now obfuscate their support and disparage our policy are shameless opportunists who will make our policy in Iraq all the more difficult and expensive. Of them I think Clark is the cheapest and most reckless. He is also a political greenhorn, as inexpert at explaining himself as he is impudent at lying.
Early this week, he began publicly opposing the administration's $87 billion package for pacifying and rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan. In no time, he was contradicting himself. Reporters overheard his saying of Iraq, "We broke the dishes, we're going to have to pay for them." When they asked him about the contradiction, The New York Times reported his saying, "Eventually we're going to have to do our part in the reconstruction."
That is a brazen deception, but a few days earlier he was even more brazen. At one of the Democrats' debates, Clark was asked about the assertion of his former superior, retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman H. Hugh Shelton, that "the reason he (Clark) came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues." Clark looked dramatically into the Gen. and solemnized that the word for that sort of claim was "McCarthyism." Shelton was not calling Clark a communist. He was calling him a man of dubious character. Clark's response proved Shelton accurate.
Opportunists such as Clark will only make our policy in Iraq more difficult, but most Americans understand there is no alternative. That is why the Democrats are ensuring their own defeat in 2004.