Barack Obama surrogate Wesley Clark: Stuck on Stupid (INCLUDES VIDEO)

None of us are strangers to the foolish words that have come out of (Ret) Gen. Wesley Clark’s mouth over the last several years.   During the run up to the 2004 presidential primaries, Clark declared that he was “delighted” to have the support of Bush-hater Michael Moore, and refused to condemn his hateful remarks in which he called President Bush a Vietnam war “deserter” and mocked his service in TANG.  A few months prior to that, he bumbled his way through the revelation that he praised President Bush and his administration a little over a year before slamming them during his failed run for the Democrat nomination for president.

A year and a half ago, Clark was infamously quoted as saying our foreign policy decisions were being dictated by wealthy New York Jews.  That same month, he suggested on a segment of Fox’s Hannity and Colmes that we sit down and “talk” with Iran’s Islamofascist, Holocaust-denying president.  More recently, he was caught denigrating John McCain’s military service (that was the second time – the first time was here), something  for which he refuses to apologize.

The latest incident involving Clark sticking his foot in his mouth comes in response to the dust-up the leftosphere started over comments McCain made a couple of days ago about the success of the surge, and when it started.  This post typifies the left’s ill-informed response to what McCain said, a response that was amplified on none other than the ever-left-moving network MSNBC, home to Nutroots fave Keith Olbermann – who once “joked” about buying McCain “more Depends or something like that.”  The level-headed Marc Ambinder, thankfully, has provided context, background, and history on what McCain has said about the surge all along, as has Karl at PW.

Where do Clark’s comments come in on all of this?  John McCormack at The Weekly Standard blog explains:

On MSNBC this morning, former Gen. Wesley Clark made some inaccurate statements about the application of the “surge” in Anbar province. “Actually, the surge was about Baghdad and it was not about Anbar province,” he said. “They didn’t bring more troops out to Anbar.”

Actually, two Marine battalions were added to Anbar as part of the surge. But Clark’s more glaring error is his contention that the “surge” amounted to nothing more than the deployment of more troops to Iraq. The “surge” strategy consisted not only of sending additional troop[s] but also waging a counterinsurgency throughout Iraq.

Watch the video below, and note how he gives the lion’s share of the credit for the surge’s success to … Iran and the Saudis:

Amazing, eh? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s also given partial credit to “the goodwill of the Iranians” for some of the surge’s successes (emphasis added):

Well, the purpose of the surge was to provide a secure space, a time for the political change to occur to accomplish the reconciliation. That didn’t happen. Whatever the military success, and progress that may have been made, the surge didn’t accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians.

Back in January Barack Obama himself gave a not so small amount of credit to Democrats for the turnaround in Iraq:

I welcome the genuine reductions of violence that have taken place, although I would point out that much of that violence has been reduced because there was an agreement with tribes in Anbar province — Sunni tribes — who started to see, after the Democrats were elected in 2006, you know what, the Americans may be leaving soon, and we are going to be left very vulnerable to the Shi’as. We should start negotiating now. That’s how you change behavior.

I swear, you cannot make this stuff up.