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Gen. Wesley Clark: What Paul Wolfowitz Told Him in 1991
Clark retelling what Paul Wolfowitz told him in 1991 about cleaning up old Soviet client regimes in 5 to 10 years.
General W. Clark on reason for USA policy of deliberate destabilizing the middle east · Beyond The Radar · uploaded 2023-03-03 · 3:26
Original: youtube.com/watch?v=4AvJQq2twvo · IPFS QmX9aZ955dDBvhSJ2rnwNFL1bbpRSE1aMV8kJcyjwci5Fm
What this video is evidence for
This short excerpt from General Wesley Clark's 2007 Commonwealth Club talk focuses on where, in Clark's telling, the seven-country plan came from: a 1991 conversation with Paul Wolfowitz, then Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (and in 2001, Deputy Secretary of Defense). Right after the first Gulf War, Clark says, Wolfowitz told him:
"We learned that we can use our military in the region in the Middle East, and the Soviets won't stop us... 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 challenge us."
Clark's conclusion: "The purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments, it's not to sort of deter conflict." Iran is on the list in 1991 and again in 2001.
Where this fits: see Pentagon Greater Israel Wars for the full explanation and sources.
Transcript
Machine transcription (apple-speechanalyzer) of the full 00:03:26. It can mishear names and words, so check exact wording against the video before quoting it.
I went through the Pentagon 10 days after 911. 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? I said, well, did they tie Saddam to 9-11? He said, no?
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 Iraq? He said, oh, sorry, he says, it's worse than that. 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. 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 Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. the number 3 position of the Pentagon. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Whether you're a Democrat or a 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?
Last Updated: 2026-09-27