ASHUA, N.H., Dec. 4 � Gen. Wesley K. Clark assured a
crowd at a college campus here on Thursday that he had a strategy to
secure Iraq and bring American soldiers home, criticizing the Bush
administration for not producing a timeline to withdraw troops.
But General Clark later refused to specify when he would bring troops
home or how many more soldiers might be needed to stabilize Iraq.
"I'm not going to produce a political answer that doesn't have the
basis underneath it to be justified," General Clark, who is retired from
the Army, said in a contentious exchange with reporters after a town hall
meeting at Daniel Webster College. "That's not right. So don't ask me to
do it. You know, you say, How long will we be there? Let me go over there
and look at it and talk to the people and I'll work that."
He said: "You say, Exactly how many troops do you need? It depends what
the mission is. I need to see all the facts."
It was a day on which the Clark campaign sought to contrast the
military and foreign policy expertise of the candidate, a former NATO
supreme allied commander, with that of President Bush. General Clark said
that Mr. Bush had "instituted the most arrogant, unctuous foreign policy
in this country's history."
"When I go to Iraq, it won't be to deliver turkey," he said, referring
to the president's surprise visit to Baghdad on Thanksgiving Day.
General Clark had previously praised President Bush for visiting the
troops. But on Thursday, he said that if he were to make such a trip as
president, "I'll actually be going over there to have consultations with
the people that are there."
The White House and Mr. Bush's re-election campaign declined to respond
to the statements.
In remarks on Thursday to about 150 people here in the nation's first
primary state, General Clark said he would give Iraqis an increasing stake
in governing their country, get rid of the American occupation authority
and change the mix of forces to improve their chance of success.
"This is not a sort of profound policy description coming from a bunch
of wonks in Washington," he later told reporters. "This is from having
been there on the ground in places like this and seeing it being
done."
But when asked to draw on his expertise and say how many troops would
be needed for how long or what his benchmarks would be for success, he
said: "You think they're really easy questions, but they're not. They're
not easy questions."
He pointed to another general who ran for president.
When Eisenhower ran in 1952, "he did not prescribe the solution to the
war in Korea," General Clark said. "He said he'd go to Korea and he'd fix
the problem. He didn't prescribe it. You don't prescribe solutions to
these problems that require an entire organization to
develop."
