General Wesley Clark at the NYC fundraiser for Eric Massa
June 19, 2006
transcript by Reg NYC

Jacques, thank you so much and thanks to all of you who helped put this event together for my friend, Eric Massa, the next Congressman from the 29th district.
(Applause)
Now, I want to ask all of you that are sort of lurking back there to lurch forward and lurk up closer here. (laughter) So that we have a little bit of, you know, like a coach's huddle.
(laughter)
Now look, we got some serious work to do for this country, and that's the truth. I don't want to talk about, you know, in terms of sort of a rabble rousing political rhetoric. I think the- (disappointed crowd noise) No, I think facts, the facts speak for themselves, and when you see that facts, if you're not roused, then there's something missing in your heart. I mean, really. You see, if you look at what's happening in this country, we're engaged in an endless war for political purposes. There hasn't been anything this nefarious done in the United States of America since the founding of the Republic to the best of my knowledge.

(applause)

Before 9/11, the Bush administration wouldn't listen to the advice of the national security professionals who knew that terrorism was a major threat to the United States. Instead, they wanted to pursue a decade-old, obsolete idea hatched by Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney to go in with military power and start knocking off former Soviet client states in the Middle East. I first learned about this plan in 1991. I was a One-Star General. I was out as Commander of the National Training Center. I was in Washington to do some schooling. I had time one afternoon. I went over to see General Colin Powell. I remembered that Paul Wolfowitz had asked me if I ever came back to the Pentagon, come in and say hello to him. I did. I went to his office. I knocked on the door. There was a guy named Scooter Libby who answered the door.
(laughter)
I'd never met him before. He brought me in to see Paul Wolfowitz. I said- It was right after the Gulf War. It was like May of 1991. I said, "Mr. Secretary, congratulations on the outstanding performance of the United States forces during the Gulf War." He said, "Well, thanks," he said, "but not really." He said, "We didn't get rid of Saddam Hussein. We should have. Some people say he'll be gone, but I, I'm doubtful about that. It was a mistake and it- But we learned one thing," he said. "We learned that with the Soviet Union the way it is, we can now use military power, and we can clean up these old client states in the Middle East that hung out with the Soviets and caused us so many problem during the Cold War." And he said, "We've got a window of five years, ten years, nobody knows how long, to do this, and we've got to do it." And I, you know, being a good One-Star General with not responsibility and no background at that point, and I just said, "Oh, that's very interesting, sir."
(laughter)
And sort of, you know, filed it away. It was like a nugget. And, you know, years later, I came to the- Two years later, three years later, I came to the Pentagon, and I thought, 'Well, I wonder if that's the strategy,' but nobody in the Clinton administration had that strategy. And then, lo and behold, after 9/11, WHOA! Up comes that strategy again. I was going through the Pentagon about the 20th of September and I went to see Rumsfeld. I was on CNN every day. I went to see Rumsfeld. I went to see Wolfowitz, and then I ran downstairs. The Joint Staff guys called me in, and they go, "Sir, come here, you gotta, you gotta listen to this." I said, "What?" They said, "We're going to attack Iraq." And I said, "Why?" And they said, "Because, because if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem has to look like a nail." They knew-
(laughter)
They knew that the decision had been made that we were going to attack Iraq, and they knew it was a bad idea! The General s knew it. They knew it.

I went back about six weeks later, and I said, "Are we still on for the attack on Iraq?" Because by this time we were bombing in Afghanistan. They said, "Oh, it's worse than that," he said. He pulls up a piece of paper - this is a General - and he said, "I've got here the memo that sort of lays out the grand plan. It's, you know, Iraq, then going into Syria, then going around the horn, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, and then taking on Iran, all within five years.
(various verbal reactions)
I said, "Is that a classified document?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Then fine. I don't want to see it." So, I didn't want to see anything that I couldn't talk about.

And what I- I didn't, still didn't fully understand until 2002, when Karl Rove said, "We're going to run the President's as a war President." Then it clicked. Hey, this is a perfect war. All you do is say, "The enemy's out there. This war's gonna last for a very long time. We can't ever tell you when it's over, and if you ever ask us, we'll accuse you of being unpatriotic and 'cut and run.' " Well let me tell you something, I think people who commit the United States Armed Forces to go war without adequate due cause, who commit the United States military to send it's young men and women abroad to fight and possible die when there's an alternative, when they use force except as the last, last, last resort, those people are unpatriotic, unwise and un-American.

(Uproarious applause)

Nobody can bring this home to the American people better than the men and women who've served in uniform. Someone asked me the other day, they said, "Look," said, "Is it a requirement for somebody to have been a veteran to be elected for Congress?" I said, "Absolutely not." It's not a requirement, and it shouldn't be. Congress should be the representatives of the American people. It takes all kinds of people, but at a time when the country is at war and likely to be at war for a long, long time, if this administration has it's way, how could you have a better foundation for public service as a representative of ordinary Americans than having some special insight into the Armed Forces? So that's why it's very important that we have veterans who run. Just an odd coincidence that most of the veterans that are running are Democrats.

(laughter, applause, various verbal outbursts)

See, most people don't, they don't understand it. They buy, they, they, they buy the Republican Party line that the military's filled with a bunch of Republicans, because they're patriotic. But the truth is, the military's full of a bunch of people who respect each other, love each other, take care of each other's families, worry about education and health care and, an, an equal playing field and, and getting it right so that each and every one of the people in uniform and their families, they can be all they can be. I've never heard a better mantra for a Democrat than the mantra and ethic of the United States Armed Forces!

(applause)

Eric Massa represents all of that and more. He's a man with tremendous character. He's got the fighting spirit. He didn't just get it by going to Annapolis and singing "Anchors Away." (laughter) He got it because it's there in his heart. He lived it through Annapolis. He lived it out through his service in uniform. He lived it out on my staff, and I saw it in his eyes on the day that we sat in my home, and we talked about his, his fatal illness and what was going to happen. And I knew I was losing, not only a trusted staff officer, but a real warrior for all the things that we love about this country and we believe in. And Eric convinced me that I had to let him go, because he was going to die. And with great reluctance, we didn't, we said goodbye. And it was December of 1998. Christmas decorations were up in the chateau as I recall. And we had a little ceremony in the office, and they had about 100 people there to say goodbye. And we gave him a Legion of Merit, and everybody cried. And, and it was so terribly, terribly sad, and then it was out of our hands. It was between Eric and the doctors and god, and god won. Eric is here.

(laughter and applause)

So, he came back. He wanted to be on active duty. He wanted to command that destroyer. He had the destroyer all picked out. We, we worked on it. We politicked for it. We did everything we could, but you know, some things are meant to be. It's like my old Division Commander used to say. He said, "Wes," he said,"all prayers are answered," he said, "And sometimes the answer is no." (laughter) So, Eric didn't get his ship, and what he got instead was an opportunity to work for a very famous Congre- Eric had always liked politics. He'd always- He understood. He'd done some stuff for the Navy on their Congressional relations, and his father had done some of that, and, and Eric had the sort of, of a, a flair for this. He kept up with the people and the personalities and the issues. He knew the staffers and sort of worked the thing. He was tremendously valuable to me. And so, it was only natural that he would then contact Duncan Hunter and be of use. Well, because Duncan Hunter's good for a strong defense. We thought. (laughter) And we thought, you know, he was an honorable man, and so Eric went to work for him. And, subsequently I announced that I was getting into the race, and Eric came over to wish me well. And I guess he made the mistake that either someone saw him or they went into his computer records and checked on an e-mail where he'd said, you know, 'good luck' or something so disloyal like that. (laughter) And so, Duncan Hunter said his services weren't any longer needed. Boy, did Duncan Hunter make a mistake.

(applause and laughter)

Duncan Hunter is going to rue the day that he turned Eric Massa loose to become a Democrat, a fighting Dem and a Congressman.

(applause, etc.)

Eric, Eric, I'm really proud to be here with you. I'm really proud of what you're doing. I'm proud to support you, to endorse you, and I'm going to be very proud to be in Washington January of 2007 when you take your office.

(applause, yelling, etc.)