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Wesley Clark Steps In It

Ugh. Mighty Tacitus rightly takes Clark to task for saying some stupid things. The quotes are pretty awful by themselves, but I thought they seemed less odious in the context of the articles...more like they might have just been injudicious attempts at self-promotion rather than slights. I guess we have to overlook the self-promotion part during a political campaign, but there's no doubt that Clark's words are injudicious at best. At worst, they are consistent with being a bad guy. Specifically, Tacitus says that people don't say things that denegrate junior officers unless "... they're self-interested careerists with no moral center." and that "That's what the officers I knew who served under Wesley Clark said of him, and I see no other way to interpret these statements." I've already indicated another way to explain Clark's words, but I (like most people) don't know enough about Clark to decide which interpretation is more likely to be right. All most of us can do at this point is add this report to our collection of evidence about Clark and await more info in the future. One potentially mitigating factor: the Kerry camp has allegedly been attacking Clark pretty hard, and that kind of thing can make one say things one wouldn't say under normal conditions. I have no interest in making excuses for Clark here, but it's important not to exaggerate the strength of this evidence.