Wes Clark's beautiful but sneaky bio ad

Here is an instance of why Rather's post-interview comments concern me. Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate, in a conversation about Clark's new ads with political correspondent William Saletan, raises the following point:

Why did his determination to fight on humanitarian grounds in Kosovo not extend to Iraq? In the scale of his despotism, Saddam Hussein was Stalin to Milosevic's Mussolini. Saddam's efforts at ethnic cleansing and repression were bigger and more vicious than anything Milosevic was capable of. Clark objects to the way Bush went about making war on Iraq, and so do I. But everything Clark says now is calculated to leave the impression, true or not, that he wouldn't have used the military to end the humanitarian and human rights catastrophe in Iraq.

What distinguishes these two instances of humanitarian intervention isn't principle, but politics. Kosovo was Clark's war. Iraq is Bush's. The general's self-serving use of one war to flay his enemy for the other is hardly shocking. Yet I resent this ad for trying to wash the contradiction away with swelling violins.

The General's position needs to be clarified for the sake of consistancy.

I honestly don't think his position is that the humanitarian situation in Iraq was not comparable to Kosovo. I would expect from his past positions that perhaps he didn't see it as the imminent, organized campaign that was underway in Kosovo. Therefore, the reasoning would go, we could have taken the time to get the world behind a humanitarian liberation of Iraq rather than trying to scare the world with bogus intelligence on WMD and terrorist links.

It's starting to be spun badly and I think a more definitive statement on this matter would help clear it up.