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.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
RSS