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Winning Without DeLay: Clark's Response to Tom DeLay's attack
Sunday morning on "Meet the Press," Republican House Majority Leader, Rep. Tom DeLay, took a cheap potshot at General Wesley Clark. Clark has consistently argued that the Bush Administration should have focused on eliminating the threat from al Qaeda and capturing Osama bin Laden, rather than rushing into war with Iraq. The Majority Leader attacked Clark for challenging the Administration's strategy. DeLay claimed questions about the Administration's failure to find Osama bin Laden came from the "fringe" of the Democratic Party and said, "unfortunately, Wesley Clark must live in a different world." The Clark campaign fired back. "General Clark lives in a world where he believes that America will be stronger, safer and more secure if we are focused on winning the war against the terrorists, getting Osama bin Laden and working with our Allies," said Reid Cherlin, a Clark campaign strategist. "Wes Clark has seen real combat, given his blood for our country, and commanded troops in battle, which is why he believes we need to win the war on terrorism instead of declaring victory when we all know that the terrorists directly responsible for 9/11 are still out there at large." "The closest to real combat that Tom 'Chicken-Hawk' DeLay has ever come was when he got himself a student deferment from Vietnam and instead suited up in his exterminator outfit and defended the people of Texas against invading cockroaches, marauding red ants and hostile moths," Cherlin continued, referring to DeLay's former pest-control business. In 1999, DeLay tried to blame minorities for his lack of military experience. According to the Houston Press, DeLay described himself and former Vice-President Dan Quayle as "victims of an unusual phenomenon back in the days of the undeclared Southeast Asian war. 'So many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like himself.' Satisfied with the pronouncement, which dumbfounded more than a few of his listeners who had lived the sixties, DeLay marched off to the convention." Clearly, DeLay and the rest of the GOP are scared of Clark's candidacy. |