Blogging conference call

Since when did Wesley Clark, former US Presidential candidate and NATO General during the “liberation” of Kosovo, conduct a conference call with carefully selected bloggers? On Monday afternoon, Clark spoke to Juan Cole, among others, and Cole writes his impressions here.

Highlights include the charge that the US military thought in September 2002 that Iraq could be “held” with 70,000 troops. Furthermore, Clark contends that the Bush administration is walking a very delicate tightrope between isolating Iran and Syria but also needing them to ensure Iraq’s insurgency doesn’t exponentially expand.

I’ve never been too fond of Clark. I remember hearing him described as the “humane war general” during last year’s US election campaign. Many commentators still contend that the Kosovo action was, in fact, not as benign as history has already written. Robert Fisk commented in 2003 that Clark’s record in Kosovo was contentious at best. “I remember General Clark telling us that more than 100 Yugoslav tanks had been destroyed in the weeks of that war”, Fisk said. “And when the war came to an end, we discovered the number of Yugoslav tanks destroyed were 11. 100 indeed.”

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