Gen. Clark Gunning for Bush

"My name is Wes Clark, I'm from Little Rock, Arkansas, and I'm here to announce that I intend to seek the presidency of the United States of America," the former general told a crowd of well-wishers today.

"We're going to ask those hard questions, my friends, and we're going to do so not in destructive bickering or in personal attacks, but in the highest tradition of democratic dialogue," Clark said. "I hope that these speeches and my entire campaign will generate some kind of frank, honest, open public debate this nation deserves."

Newsday reports that someone from the throng shouted to Clark, "Give 'em hell, General," as Clark was shaking hands with those gathered. He pumped his fist, smiled and replied, "We're going to give them the truth, and they'll think it's hell."

Clark said that his life had been a long journey, including 34 years in the U.S. Army, but that he was now embarking on a "new journey" to the White House.

He thanked the "draft Clark movement" for taking an inconceivable idea and making it conceivable, then got cheers from the crowd in Little Rock by blasting President Bush on his policies regarding jobs, foreign policy and civil liberties.

The 58-year-old retired four-star general and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in Europe, not to mention a Rhodes scholar who earned a master's degree at Oxford University in England, and the cadet at the top of his class at West Point (1966), apparently brings quite a resume from the real world to the political one.

He bespeaks a legitimacy on military matters that none of the other candidates do. However, as Lowell Ponte points out in FrontPageMag.com:

While commanding NATO troops in defense of Muslim Kosovo and against Serbian Christians, the hot-headed Clark commanded a subordinate British General to attack Russian troops that had landed without NATO permission at the airport in Kosovo’s capital.

The British General Sir Mike Jackson reportedly refused Clark’s risky orders by saying: "I’m not going to start the Third World War for you!"

And don't forget that Clark, commander of the 1st Cavalry in Fort Hood, Texas, in 1993, sent tanks and equipment to a settlement near Waco to deal with the Branch Davidians.

So, Clark has a lot of questions to answer, in his area of expertise and outside of it.

"My campaign will move the country forward, not back," Clark said before promising to bring the American people together under his leadership.

It is, of course, not known how he will do that. He has obviously spoken with Terry McAuliffe, the DNC's chairman, because Clark is echoing the Democrat mantra of the "millions of jobs that have been lost under President Bush," which Clark intends to restore.

[Amazingly, no Democrats mention that most of those ephemeral jobs were created during the Internet stock bubble of 1998, 1999 and 2000, when a certain Democrat was president.

Job losses since then have been a result of those overzealous days, and simply because companies have laid off workers during the Bush administration does not mean that the president is responsible. But we digress.]

Initial reports had none other than Sen. Hillary Clinton herself slated to be Clark's campaign co-chairman. But the senator's office told Fox News that she had not agreed to serve on the campaign.

Fox reports, "Clark aides said they had miscommunicated with Clinton's office and no determination had been made about her participation."

Hillary will now wait to see if "Wes Clark" catches on, and if not, she has until Nov. 21 to enter New Hampshire's primary, possibly with the general in mind as her running mate.

But for now, Clark contends that he has "very relevant experiences to the challenges our nation faces at this time," and he wants to be your president.

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