*General Wesley Clark, for waiting until recently to reveal to Amy Goodman on "Democracy Now" the
following: "About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and
Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint
Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, 'Sir, you've got to
come in and talk to me a second.' I said, 'Well, you're too busy.' He said, 'No, no.' He
says, 'We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq.' This was on or about the 20th of
September. I said, 'We're going to war with Iraq? Why?' He said, 'I don't know.' He said, 'I guess
they don't know what else to do.' So I said, 'Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam
to al Qaeda?' He said, 'No, no.' He says, 'There's nothing new that way. They just made the decision
to go to war with Iraq.' He said, 'I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but
we've got a good military and we can take down governments.' And he said, 'I guess if the only tool
you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.' So I came back to see him a few weeks
later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, 'Are we still going to war with
Iraq?' And he said, 'Oh, it's worse than that.' He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of
paper. And he said, 'I just got this from upstairs'--meaning the Secretary of Defense's office--
"today." And he said,
'This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in
five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off,
Iran.'
I said, 'Is it classified?' He said, 'Yes, sir.' I said, 'Well, don't show it to me.' And I
saw him a year or so ago, and I said, 'You remember that?' He said, 'Sir, I didn't show you that
memo! I didn't show it to you!'"
