A blessed few Americans ARE greeted as liberators abroad...
um, Dick Cheney ISN'T ONE. Have been eagerly awaiting world of General Clark's trip to Kosovo & reports are starting to come in.
PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) - Retired U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark will arrive Wednesday for a three-day visit to Kosovo, officials said. http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/...
Ahead of his visit, billboards were placed around the province's capital, Pristina, and local authorities in the western town of Djakovica named a road after him.
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Clark to Navy Times: Begin troop withdrawals
http://www.navytimes.com/...
By Garentina Kraja, Associated Press
PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro -- Retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark called Thursday for transition of authority in Iraq during the course of this year and said that the United States should soon begin the process of withdrawing the U.S. soldiers.
Clark, a four-star general who served as the supreme commander of NATO in 1997-2000 and unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, said the fledging Iraqi government must take charge and be given the means to address the security in the country.
"It's necessary ... to make this year a year of transition in Iraq," Clark told The Associated Press in an interview during his visit to Kosovo. "The Iraqi government must take charge."
He said that ministers of interior, defense and national security should be appointed, but also said that a lot of help is needed from the international community to strengthen the Iraqi government in meeting the needs of the people.
"And then we should begin the process of withdrawing the U.S. soldiers and other coalition soldiers from Iraq," said Clark.
"I do think that there should be no permanent bases there. I think that the United States should soon begin its process of redeployment," he said, adding that he believed there will be "some withdrawals very soon given where we are."
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And- from Yahoo News:
Wesley Clark told Kosovo Albanian leaders in Pristina he had confidence in their "strong, positive and visionary proposals" to find a solution for Kosovo, which has been run by the United Nations and NATO since 1999.
http://news.yahoo.com/...
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Former General Calls for Darfur Force
(technically I think she means "retired" not "former!")
http://www.forward.com/...
By JENNIFER SIEGEL, May 26, 2006
As world leaders struggle to halt the mass killing in Darfur, former general and 2004 presidential candidate Wesley Clark is calling for NATO to intervene in the conflict and for the United States to commit a small detachment of ground troops.
Clark served as the supreme allied commander of the NATO forces that drove Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic from power in 1999. The former American general's call for heightened intervention in Darfur came on the eve of his first trip back to Kosovo, the Serbian province where ethnic Albanians were targeted by Milosevic for ethnic cleansing.
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I apologize for the lack of formatting- having trouble between Mozilla & Explorer & don't have time to sort it out. I just wanted to post these snippets because as usual, Wes Clark gets more accomplished & covers more ground in 24 hours than most of our politicians do in a month!
I wanted to say- "We have so few opportunities to put our best foot forward internationally... blah blah blah" but this is not true. "We" have opportunities to do the right thing day after day after week after week after year after year & still, the American government runs roughshod over the greater good of the world, pursuing shortsighted policies designed to benefit the upper global crust at the expense of the many.