eXtreme Nitpicking

From RNC chairman, Ed Gillespie's January 15th speech

Now, while Wesley Clark?’s rationale for becoming a Democrat may be funny, his increasingly careless comments about the President are not.

Just this week, he said that after the bombings of American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and the attack on the USS Cole the Clinton team spent months devising a special operations plan to dismantle Al Qaeda and turned it over to the Bush administration, but ?“this administration failed to do its duty to protect the United States of America before 9/11.?”

This is completely at odds with his own assertion right after September 11 that while it had been clear for some time that there were groups planning some kind of attack, ?“We didn't have the tools or co-operation or good enough information we needed to prevent it.?” But more importantly, it is refuted outright by former Clinton National Security Council Director Sandy Berger, who testified in September 2002 before the Intelligence Committees of the House and Senate saying, ?“[T]here was no war plan [to fight terrorism and Al Qaeda] that we turned over to the Bush administration during the transition. And the reports of that are just incorrect.?”

General Clark?’s random assertions rarely pan out, but he continues to make them and the growing list is unsettling.

Just yesterday he said, ?“Let me be clear I have opposed this war from the start.?”

An odd assertion, because as the debate over a resolution to authorize the President to use force in Iraq started in Congress, Wes Clark told a Congressional candidate he supported the resolution and if she were in Congress she should too.

It seems Ed Gillespie got a word of the day calendar for Christmas. Maybe someone should get him a thesaurus for his birthday.