Albright Defends Democratic Candidate Clark

[Jeremy1952]

MIAMI - Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Monday defended retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, who since announcing his presidential bid has come under fire from former Pentagon colleagues who say he was disliked among fellow commanders. Albright, who served under President Bill Clinton and worked closely with Clark during the war in Kosovo that he engineered as NATO supreme commander, credited Clark with the victory there. "He really won that war militarily," Albright said during a lunch with Miami Herald editors and writers to promote her new memoirs, "Madam Secretary" (Miramax Books, $25.95). "He's a very fine person and a very good friend," Albright added, "and I don't like some of the attacks that are coming about him. I think he was a very fine soldier and a patriot, and I'm glad that he got into the race." Clark, a retired four-star general, has rocketed to the top of the 10-candidate field vying for the Democratic nomination, despite only recently deciding to become a Democrat and entering the race two weeks ago. He has emerged as a leading critic of the war in Iraq and is viewed by some Democratic and Republican strategists as the most potent threat to President Bush's reelection next year - a point that has made Clark a target for critics who question his decision-making during the Kosovo war. The former secretary, who now runs a global strategy firm in Washington, was careful to say Monday that she was not endorsing Clark, and that she has been advising all the Democratic presidential candidates. She said the Iraq war would become an increasingly critical factor in the campaign if questions persist about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. "The more information that comes out that the information from the Bush administration about Iraq was inaccurate or manipulated, the more the people who doubted it will get saliency," said Albright, who has used a series of national television interviews in recent days to criticize the Bush administration on Iraq. If a Democrat wins the White House next year, Albright said, she would happily return to the administration. In her conversation with Miami Herald writers, Albright called for an international embrace of Cuban dissidents and said world leaders should give Varela Project leader Oswaldo Paya whatever he wants. Albright recently joined a group of European leaders, including former Czech President Vaclav Havel and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, formed to build international support for dissidents on the island seeking legitimacy and resources to fight the Castro government. She said the project was "making Castro nervous" and that dissidents wanted the attention. "They say over and over again, `Just shine the light on us,' " Albright said of dissidents. "They say if nobody pays attention to us, then whatever dictator's in charge can in fact do whatever he wants." For the sake of legitimacy, Albright added, "It cannot be viewed as a U.S. versus Castro thing. It needs to come from international sources." ~ Mercury News Science is neither a philosophy nor a belief system. It is a combination of mental operations that has become increasingly the habit of educated peoples, a culture of illuminations hit upon by a fortunate turn of history that yielded the most effective way of learning about the real world ever conceived. E.O.Wilson