Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal for President?

Gen. Wesley Clark is a major war criminal.

Please don't be fooled by the current well-orchestrated push to nominate Clark as Democratic Party candidate for president, a trap that Michael Moore has apparently fallen into as well as a number of other well-meaning peace people.

Gen. Wesley Clark was in charge of US military-run refugee camps in the 1980s and 1990s where Haitian refugees who were fleeing first Baby Doc Duvalier -- and later the new regime installed by the US following the overthrowal of the elected Aristide government -- were packed, under appalling conditions condemned by the Center for Constitutional Rights, among many others.

In the 1980s, many Haitian male refugees incarcerated at Krome (in Miami), and Fort Allen (in Puerto Rico) reported a strange condition called gyneacomastia, a situation in which they developed full female breasts. Ira Kurzban, attorney for the Haitian Refugee Center, managed to pry free government documents via a lawsuit on behalf of the refugees. These contained the startling information that prison officials had ordered the refugees sprayed repeatedly with highly toxic chemicals never designed for such use. The officer in charge of the refugee camp? None other than Gen. Wesley Clark, who became chief of operations at the US Navy internment camp at Guantanamo, and later head of NATO forces bombing Yugoslavia.

The documents go on to say that lengthy exposure to the particular chemicals Clark authorized to be sprayed on detainees can cause hormonal changes that, among other things, induce development of female breasts in men. In addition, medical studies of female Haitian refugees in New York revealed that they had a much higher rate of cervical cancer than the rest of the female population.

In Guantanamo, Haitian refugees who had done nothing illegal but who were said to be HIV-positive were cruelly incarcerated. They were repeatedly sprayed, detained for long periods outside in sweltering heat, given poor rations, and subjected to repeated physical as well as psychological abuse, all under Clark's "oversight". Many died as a result of the conditions they were forced to undergo.

Half a decade later, Gen Wesley Clark became supreme NATO commander in Yugoslavia. He presided over the massive use of depleted uranium weapons there which poisoned Yugoslavia's water supply and agriculture, leading to an extremely high rate of miscarriages and childhood cancers.

Clark was also in charge of NATO's "spin" in the Yugoslavia bombardment. Clark called the destruction of a Yugoslav train filled with civilians by a NATO missile "an uncanny accident." He said the same each time that NATO bombed civilian targets, which happened frequently.

Paul Watson reported in the San Francisco Chronicle that "NATO bombers scored several direct hits here in Kosovo's capital yesterday — including a graveyard, a bus station, and a children's basketball court." (April 14) A Spanish pilot flying missions for NATO, Capt. Martin de la Hoz, stated that on a number of occasions his supervising colonel protested to NATO about their bombing of non-military, civilian targets. "Once there was a coded order from the North American military that we should drop anti-personnel bombs over Pristina and Nis. All of the missions that we flew, all and each one, were planned in detail, including attacking planes, targets and type of ammunition, by US high-ranking military authorities. ... They are destroying the country," the Spanish F-18 pilot continued, "bombing it with novel weapons, toxic nerve gasses, surface mines dropped by parachute, bombs containing uranium, black napalm, sterilization chemicals, sprayings to poison crops, and weapons of which even we still know nothing about." (quoted in "Articulo 20," a Spanish weekly newspaper, June 14, 1999)

Clark was in charge of NATO forces and oversaw planning of these missions. He defended all of these bombings, and was an integral part of the Clinton team's "spin" operation in Yugoslavia.

It now also appears that Clark was "tactical consultant" to US military forces present at the Waco, Texas massacre on February 28, 1993, when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, along with the FBI/Delta Force launched its disastrous and lethal raid on the Branch Davidian compound, in which 82 people were killed. Was Clark the military "genius" that planned the assault on the civilian compound? Thus far, the corporate media have given him a free pass and have not asked him about it, and independent investigators have not been successful in prying the necessary documentation from the military's clutches, despite mounting evidence that Clark was deeply involved at Waco.