General Wesley Clark unleashed his most blistering attack yet on the Bush administration in the president's home state Monday, vowing to win Texas in November if he is the Democratic nominee.
"I think we're at risk with our democracy," Clark told an audience of about 500 people at a fund-raiser at the Westin Galleria hotel. "I think we're dealing with the most closed, imperialistic, nastiest administration in living memory. They even put Richard Nixon to shame. They are a threat to what this nation stands for, and we need to get him out of the White House. And we're going to do it."
PHOTO: AFP
When a supporter yelled out, "Give it to him!" Clark responded: "We're going to give it to him, and you're going to have to take him back, right here in Texas. Let him chop cedar." The reference was to one of President George W. Bush's favorite leisure activities on his ranch in Crawford, about 190km southwest of Dallas.
Clark has been emboldened in recent days by a surge in polls measuring voter preference in New Hampshire and across the country. He has drawn growing crowds to town hall meetings in New Hampshire, which holds the nation's first primary on Jan. 27. He attracted groups of more than 500 supporters in trips to North Dakota and Wisconsin over the weekend. He is not competing in the Iowa caucuses next Monday.
Clark's attacks on the Bush administration have grown stronger since articles began to be published over the weekend about a new book in which Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury secretary, is critical of the president.
Clark said Sunday that he believed the book validated his charges, made almost daily on the campaign trail, that the Bush administration began planning for a war against Iraq immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, if not sooner.
To rousing cheers, Clark asked supporters here to help him win the Democratic nomination by voting in the state's March 2 primary. The campaign raised about US$250,000 at the event, a campaign official said. Before the fund-raiser, Clark received the endorsement of Representative Martin Frost, a Democrat who is the senior member of the Texas congressional delegation.
If the fight for the Democratic nomination is not settled by March 2, as many Democrats think it will be, it almost certainly will be decided on that day, when California, New York, Ohio and Massachusetts also hold their primaries.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS