Clark on Iraq and on torture
Video (alternate, transcript) - Clark appears on the O'Reilly Factor to discuss Iraq. He discusses his three-prong plan: military, politics, diplomacy. In the first year the U.S. just had the military, and has this year added the political, but it has never added the diplomatic angle. The mission is in trouble, and the diplomatic angle is necessary if there is going to be a fix. Iran and Syria need incentives to help us but we aren't talking to them. The military mission is being held hostage by the neighbors so we need to talk to them. O'Reilly says Iran is too far beyond the pale to be reached. Clark gets O'Reilly to say that he's never been there, whereas Clark has talked to people in Iran and they are still reachable. They disagree over whether Iran wants a regional war, Clark says no and that is an interest we can work on with them. O'Reilly then brings up the torture question with the release of Abu Ghraib. Clark takes a very strong stand against torture, saying that when he was in the Army and in the past torture and abuse were not condoned; those who did these things were courtmartialed. We need to know the truth and we need to make the political leadership accountable for it.
Discussion at CCN and Daily Kos. Specific discussion of a strange claim made by O'Reilly is here and here (also here and here). And that wasn't O'Reilly's only outrage. In less than ten minutes, Clark seems to have driven O'Reilly completely off his rocker.
Added: As if all of that wasn't enough, Fox altered the transcript to falsely attribute one of O'Reilly's statements to Clark.
