← Videos
Gen. Wesley Clark: "A Policy Coup" (Commonwealth Club, 2007)
Wesley Clark's Commonwealth Club speech calling the post-9/11 war plan a "policy coup".
Wes Clark - America's Foreign Policy "Coup" · FORA.tv · uploaded 2007-11-05 · 8:14
Original: youtube.com/watch?v=TY2DKzastu8 · IPFS QmY3uFnmGcnRMr74rDrZoBU8b99qsThryQJpYrxEg3HFJd
What this video is evidence for
In this October 2007 talk at the Commonwealth Club of California (published by FORA.tv), retired General Wesley Clark goes further than his Democracy Now! interview. He calls what happened after 9/11 a takeover of US foreign policy by a small group:
"We had, instead, a policy coup... Some hard nosed people took over the direction of American policy, and they never bothered to inform the rest of us."
He retells the memo from the Secretary of Defense's office "that says we're going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in 5 years. We're going to start with Iraq, and then we're going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran." He then traces the idea back to a 1991 meeting with Paul Wolfowitz, who, according to Clark, said "we've got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes. Syria, Iran, Iraq."
Clark names Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld and people from the Project for a New American Century as the group behind it. Clark's central complaint is that there was never a public debate: "Did senators and congressmen stand up and denounce this plan? ... Absolutely not. And there still isn't."
Where this fits: see Pentagon Greater Israel Wars for the full explanation and sources.
Transcript
Machine transcription (apple-speechanalyzer) of the full 00:08:14. It can mishear names and words, so check exact wording against the video before quoting it.
For a TV, the world is thinking. What happened at 9/11 is we didn't have a strategy, we didn't have bipartisan agreement. We didn't have American understanding of it. And we had, instead, a policy coup... In this country, a coup, a policy coup.
Some hard nosed people took over the direction of American policy, and they never bothered to inform the rest of us. I went through the Pentagon 10 days after 9/11. I couldn't stay away from Mother Army. I went back there to see Don Rumsfeld. I'd worked for him as a White House fellow in the 1970s.
All this in a book. And I said, am I doing okay on CNN? Yeah, yeah, yeah, fine. He said, I'm thinking about it. He says, I read your book, and he said, this is a book that talks about the Kosva campaign.
And he said, I just want to tell you, he said, nobody's going to tell us where when we can bomb. Nobody. He said, I'm thinking of calling this a floating coalition. What do you think about that? I said, well, sir, thanks for reading my book.
And, well, she said, thanks, that's all the time I've got. Really? And, um, I went downstairs, I was leaving the Pentagon, and an officer from the joint staff called me into his office and said, I want you to know, he said, sir, we're going to attack Iraq. And I said, why? He said, We don't know.
He said, I said, well, did they tie Saddam to 9-11? He said, no. He said, but, um, I guess it's they don't know what to do about terrorism. And so, uh, the they think, but they can attack states and they want to look strong. And so I guess they think if they take down a state, it will intimidate the terrorists.
And, you know, it's like that old saying, he said, if the only 2 of you have a hammer, then every problem has to be a nail. Well, I walked out of there pretty upset. And then we attacked Afghanistan. I was pretty happy about that. We should have.
And then I came back to the Pentagon about 6 weeks later, I saw the same officer. I said, why haven't we attacked Iraq? We still going to attack Iraqi? He said, oh, sir, he says, it's worse than that. He said, um, He pulled up a piece of paper off his desk.
He said, I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense's office that says we're going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in 5 years. We're going to start with Iraq, and then we're going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. I 7 countries in 5 years. I said, is that a classified memo? He said, yes, sir.
I said, well don't show it to me. He was about to show it to me. He said, because I want to talk about it. And I sat on this information for a long time for about 6 or 8 months. I was so stunned by this.
I couldn't begin to talk about it. And I couldn't believe it would really be true, but that's actually what happened. These people took control of the policy in the United States. And I realized then it came back to me. A 1991 meeting I had with Paul Wolfowitz.
You know, in 2001, he was Deputy Secretary of Defense, but in 1991, he was the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. the number 3 position of the Pentagon. And I had gone to see him when I was a one star general. I was commanding the National Training Center. I had met him one time.
He said, if you ever get to Washington, come look me up. They always say that. Well, I was there in Washington. It was a Friday afternoon. I'd visited Colin Powell, he'd given me 5 minutes of his precious time and sent me on my way, and I was bored in the Pentagon, and I thought, I'll just go, who can I see?
I think I'll see Wolfowitz. So I called and up there. He was available. Scooter Libby came to the door. I met Scooter for the 1st time, and he brought me in, and I said to Paul, I said, and this is 1991.
I said, Mr. Secretary, you must be pretty happy with the performance of the troops in Desert Storm. And he said, well, yeah, he said, but not really, he said, because the truth is, we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein, and we didn't. And this was just after the Shia uprising in March of 91, which we had provoked, and then we kept our troops on the sidelines and didn't intervene. And he said, but one thing we did learn, he said, we learned that we can use our military in the region in the Middle East and the Soviets won't stop us.
He said, and we've got about 5 or 10 years. to clean up those old Soviet client regimes. Syria, Iran. Iraq, before the next great superpower comes on to challenges. And it was like, you know, I'm coming out of the Mojave desert.
I'm been training troops. I haven't been thinking geostrategy for some time. And suddenly, a guy just sort of shoves this nugget at you. Well, you remember it. It was a pretty stunning thing.
You mean, the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments, it's not to sort of deter conflict. We're going to invade countries and I, you know, my mind was spinning. And I put that aside. It was like a nugget that you hold onto. This country was taken over by a group of people with a policy coup, Wolfowitz, and Cheney, and Rumsfeld, and you could name a half dozen other collaborators from the project for a new American century.
They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down. Make it under our control. It went back to those comments in 1991. Now, did anybody ever tell you that? Was there a national dialogue on this?
Did senators and congressmen stand up and denounce this plan? Was there a full-fledged American debate on it? Absolutely not. And there still isn't. And that's why we're failing in Iraq.
Because Iran and Syria know about the plan. All you have to do is read the, the, the, weekly standard and listen to Bill Crystal, and he blabber mouths it all over the world, Richard Pearl the same way. They could hardly wait to finish Iraq so they could move into Syria. It was like a laydown. Our legions are going to go in there.
This wasn't what the American people voted George Bush into office well. They didn't actually vote him into office, but it wasn't what many of the people who It wasn't what he campaigned on. He campaigned on a humble foreign policy, the most arrogant foreign policy in American history. He campaigned on no peacekeeping, no nation building, and here he is with Afghanistan and Iraq. astonishing.
So the root of the problem is not how many troops are in Iraq. Please believe me. Don't be mad if you're a Democrat at your Democratic congressman because they can't reduce the troops and frustrate the president. That's not the issue. And if you're a Republican, don't be mad at the Democrats because they're fussing with the troops.
Whether you're a Democrat or Republican, If you're an American, you ought to be concerned about the strategy of the United States, in this region. What is our aim? What is our purpose? Why are we there? Why are Americans dying in this region?
That is the issue.
Last Updated: 2026-09-27