PS. For a quicker rebuttal to the latest Big Lie -- that Clark testified in 2002 before HASC (House Armed Services
Committee) FOR the Iraq war when, in fact, he was arguing AGAINST it -- I was going to post a link that doesn't seem to be working from mudcat. So, to quote the whole Kleiman article (www.markarkleiman.com/archives/wesley_clark_/2004/01/exclusive_falsehood.php):


"January 15, 2004
 Exclusive falsehood

Drudge has a breathless "exclusive" today on the transcript of Wesley Clark's HASC testimony that Digby found three
days ago and I commented on yesterday.

A reader wants to know what Drudge thinks is "exclusive." I think the answer is pretty obvious: what's exclusive is
Drudge's complete misinterpretation of what Clark said.

Drudge says that Clark "made the case for war." That is the opposite of the truth.

Clark, in his testimony, made it clear that we ought to be ready to go to war, if Iraq failed to disarm and submit to
inspections, but that war ought to be a last resort, and that in the absence of any imminent threat continued pressure short
of an invasion was the better course.

I think it's not time yet to use force against Iraq but it is certainly time to put that card on the table, to turn it face up and to
wave it and the president is doing that and I think that the United States Congress has to indicate after due consideration
and consulting our people and building our resolve that yes, this is a significant security problem for the United States of
America and all options are on the table including the use of force as necessary to solve this problem because I think
that's what's required to leverage any hope of solving this problem short of war.

Is that clear enough? Or is there some part of "I think it's not time yet to use force against Iraq" or "solving this problem
short of war" that Mr. Drudge needs to have explained to him more slowly?

In the course of arguing against going to war, or authorizing the President to go to war, right then, Clark brushed away a
number of bad reasons against going to war before getting to the good ones. That's called "intellectual honesty": a virtue
with which Drudge, like many of Clark's critics, seems unfamiliar. Among grown-ups, saying "Argument X is a bad
argument against Proposition Y" is not the same a saying "I think Proposition Y is true."

Be sure to add Drudge to your bookmarks if you want exclusive misinformation delivered directly to your screen.


Update: Robert Tagorda, no Clark supporter, agrees. So does Tom Maguire, who says of Clark: "His full remarks are
sensible and consistent with what I understand him to have been saying on Iraq."

Kudos to both Tagorda and Maguire for crossing partisan lines to defend the truth, and to Glenn Reynolds for linking to
Maguire. Intellectual honesty is a rare enough virtue in political discourse to be worth treasuring.

Second update: "A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth has its boots laced." Lou Dobbs repeats
Drudge's lie, according to this account at MWO. (I encourage readers to use the MWO click-through to send emails to
Dobbs and his boss.)

Ed Gillespie, chair of the RNC, is also repeating the lie, according to this Knight-Ridder story. The reporters, Dana Hunt
and Drew Brown, do their job properly, reporting the false accusation and simultaneously documenting its falsehood. "


    THIS IS CRITICAL because it represents what Clark was saying when it mattered, when his testimony was (he hoped) being taken into account. Unfortunately it wasn't.
    You know, sometimes I feel like a voice wandering in the wilderness, saying "hey, two and two really is four" . . . . I'd
give up in despair if I didn't think it mattered to this country, and indeed to the whole world, that we vote George W. Bush
out of office.