Who is behind the drive to war in Syria?

[David Guyatt]

Tracy, I suspect that the underlying strategy revealed by General Wesley Clark in 2001 is still active, namely for the US to take out 7 countries in 5 years. The seven countries named by Clark are:

Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.

There are many websites that have reported this story, but try this one for example.

It seems pretty evident (to me anyway) that there were a small number of driving forces for this, including getting control over the huge Iraqi and Iranian oil fields, and also to nullify that radical muslim nations in the region - and to stop the Iranian atomic programme.

David - why do you think Wesley Clark made these public comments?

Clark was born into a relatively poor melting pot family, and grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas (yes...), before being identified as "a very bright kid", and being sponsored as a Rhodes Scholar (oh yes).

So, Clark was adopted into elite circles and eventually became Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in Europe. He came close to starting WW3 with his order for NATO troops to attack Russian soldiers at Pristina airport.

Since then, he's tried to become POTUS several times, and attacked McCain.

His comments in the interview clip play almost as a joke, a throwaway line, but Clark seems sincere to me. I don't think he's making this up.

So what's he talking about? The Neocon agenda? An elite factional agenda to which he is opposed?

I note the following passage from the wiki on Clark:

Clark has said that he began to truly define his politics only after his military retirement and the 2000 presidential election, won by George W. Bush. Clark had a conversation with Condoleezza Rice in which she told him that the war in Kosovo would not have occurred under Bush. Clark found such an administration unsettling, as he had been selected for the SACEUR position because he believed more in the interventionist policies of the Clinton administration. He said he would see it as a sign that things were "starting to go wrong" with American foreign policy under Bush.[96] Clark supported the administration's War in Afghanistan in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks but did not support the Iraq War. Clark continued to warn people as a commentator on CNN that he believed the United States was undermanned in Iraq. He said the war was "never [about]... WMD or regime change" and believes "the connection to the War on Terrorism was not shown."[97][98]

Jan, it has been my hypothesis-cum-perspective on this that Clark was letting this cat out of the bag because of sour grapes - possibly due to differences with the Bush administration.

Like you I think he is truthful about it. I also see the dominoes falling as he predicted - although not in the same time frame or pattern he laid out, so overall I continue to give this value as a distinct possibility, if not a proven fact.