Senator Clinton, in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, General Wesley Clark said:

. . . The resolution need not at this point authorize the use of force, but simply agree on the intent to authorize the use of force, if other measures fail.

Before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Clark said:

. . . GEN. CLARK: I think that the United States always has the option of acting unilaterally. But I'd say in this case it's a question of what's the sense of urgency here, and how soon would we need to act unilaterally? And so I think it's very important that we recognize that so far as any of the information has been presented, as General Hoar said, there is nothing that indicates that in the immediate, next hours, next days, that there's going to be nuclear-tipped missiles put on launch pads to go against our forces or our allies in the region. And so I think there is, based on all of the evidence available, sufficient time to work through the diplomacy of this.

. . . I think the third requirement is that we have the ingenuity and patience to work on the coalition partners we need and our allies, from many different directions and many different perspectives.

We need to go to NATO. Have we gone to NATO? NATO came to us after 9/11 and said, "This is a violation of the North Atlantic Charter. This is Article 5. We want to work with you." This is a great opportunity for NATO to come in. Have we done that? Mr. Rumsfeld's over there today, talking to NATO ministers. So I think that's one indication.

I think from NATO you go back to the United Nations. I think you make your case in front of all of the Islamic organizations. You make it at various levels, from the military level on up to the head of state level, and you work it.

. . . GEN. CLARK: I've been concerned that the attention on Iraq will distract us from what we're doing with respect to al Qaeda. I don't know all of the particulars today of how we distribute our resources around the world. These are details that are classified; they're handled by very well-understood processes. But it was my -- it's been my experience from commanding and combat that I would like every bit of intelligence I could get, and we used a lot going after only that small part of Europe which we were attacking in 1999, inside Yugoslavia and in Kosovo.

So I think, as a minimum, that when one opens up another campaign, there is a diversion of effort. The question is whether the diversion of effort is productive or counterproductive. I really -- it's -- there are forces operating in both directions at this point. You can make the argument, as General Shalikashvili did, that you want to cut off all sources of supply. Problem with that argument is that Iran really has had closer linkages with the terrorists in the past and still does, apparently, today, than Iraq does. So that leads you to then ask, well, what will be the impact on Iran? And that's uncertain. But it does -- if you could take these weapons out quickly, then it would cut off that potential source of supply.

On the other hand, by lumping the two together -- al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein -- it's also possible that we will have incentivized Saddam Hussein now as a last-ditch defense to do what we wouldn't have done before, which is, "Go find me the nearest members of al Qaeda. Here, take this sack and do something with it." So it's not clear which way this cuts right now, but at some point, we are going to have to deal with Saddam Hussein. We are going to have to work against the weapons of mass destruction -- not only there but also, in the case of Iran.

And whether this is the right way, the right time to do it depends in large measure on how we proceed. And this is why I underscore again and again the importance of diplomacy first and going through the United Nations, because I think that gives us our best way of reaching out to achieve this objective with minimum adverse impact on the struggle against al Qaeda. The longer we can reasonably keep the focus on al Qaeda, the better that war is going to go, in my view.

. . . SEN. CLELAND: And if you took out Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party, the secularist party, don't the Sunnis and the Shi'ite Muslims make up a majority of the population in Iraq, and wouldn't that give Iran a strong hand there, and we ultimately end up creating a Muslim state, even under democratic institutions?

GEN. CLARK: Yes, sir. I think that there is a substantial risk in the aftermath of the operation that we could end up with a problem which is more intractable than we have today.

One thing we're pretty clear on is that Saddam has a very effective police state apparatus. He doesn't allow challenges to his authority inside that state. When we go in there with a transitional government and a military occupation of some indefinite duration, it's also very likely that if there is an effective al Qaeda left -- and there certainly will be an effective organization of extremists -- they will pour into that country because they must compete for the Iraqi people; the Wahabes with the Sunnis, the Shi'as from Iran working with the Shi'a population. So it's not beyond consideration that we would have a radicalized state, even under a U.S. occupation in the aftermath.

While it is positive that:

The [Clinton] campaign began a push yesterday to deal with its Iraq challenge. Besides her remarks in New Hampshire, Mrs. Clinton submitted a bill in the Senate to block sending more troops to Iraq, though she would not cut off financing. In a new video on her Web site, she called for starting to redeploy troops within 90 days — or else, she threatened, Congress should revoke authorization for the war.

this does nothing to answer questons on her thinking in 2002, when she voted for the most disastrous strategic blunder in the history of the nation.