The five-year plan

Dear Editor:As the war of words over the war(s) in the Middle East heats up, I’d like to share information from a recent interview on Democracy Now! that offers a different perspective on the “War on Terror” debate. Amy Goodman was talking to retired four-star general, Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces during the war in Kosovo and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Wesley Clark.Clark said he stopped by the Pentagon just over a week after 9/11 to talk to some of the people he had served with on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. One of the generals told him “We’ve just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” Several weeks later, after the bombing of Afghanistan had begun, Clark returned to the Pentagon and asked the general, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” He said, “Oh, it’s worse than that. I just got this from upstairs” – meaning the Secretary of Defense’s Office – “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.”Isn’t it interesting that the so called “liberal media,” which couldn’t get enough of the mistranslated Ahmadinejad speech on Israel, has no ink for the Clark story?We all have to be concerned about terrorism, but you will never end terrorism by terrorizing others. – Martin Luther KingJim ChenowethNew Castle