Clark In Connecticut

by digby

So I read that Wes Clark is going to Connecticut to stump for Lamont. I’m sure it will make Holy Joe Tortureman pretty uncomfortable to know that General Clark also gave a speech at UCLA on Monday denouncing the torture legislation:

Clark — who was supreme commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization under President Clinton and led a coalition of nearly a score of countries to successfully end Serbian oppression of Kosovo’s Albanians in 1999 — said the Bush administration’s insistence on more leeway in applying Geneva Convention standards to the interrogation of terrorism detainees runs counter to America’s history of observing international law.

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Making his debut as a senior fellow at the Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations at the university’s International Institute, Clark called law “the ultimate human construct — more important than bridges, more important than [micro]chips…. Law is sacred in the American system.”

Clark’s appearance was the first in what he said would probably be monthly visits to UCLA to speak with faculty, address graduate seminars and participate in academic conferences. A former Rhodes scholar with a master’s degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University, he taught political science at the U.S. Military Academy for three years.

Recent congressional action authorizing the administration to try terrorism suspects before military tribunals and banning torture — while not prohibiting specific coercive techniques — will not silence the debate over the Geneva Convention, he said. The trials of the suspects will raise questions, he said: “What coercive tactics were used? How reliable was the information” thus obtained?

“It’s going to bring everything back to the surface,” Clark said.

Most important, he told the approximately 40 people who attended the breakfast roundtable, backtracking on the Geneva Convention represents a retreat from values America once promoted to the world.

“It was America that led to the creation of the Geneva Convention,” he said, “and now we’re walking away from it, from the very values we espoused?”

Apparently the highly moral Senator Tortureman finds that view very old fashioned.

I’m glad to see Clark going up to Connecticut to support Lamont. Any Dem politician who cares about having a Democratic Senate should do so too. Lieberman is openly blackmailing the Democratic caucus now pretty much saying that if he’s stripped of his seniority he’ll bolt to the Republicans. I wouldn’t have thought it would take more than him running as an independent against the Democratic nominee to prove that he is a disloyal backstabber, but this really should be the last straw. This man who has abandoned the Democratic party is now demanding that he be rewarded for his perfidy. He really needs to be defeated.

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