That could be what led Richard Perle to call Clark's testimony "hopelessly confused." You can make anything you want out of what Clark said.
As Andrew Sullivan points out, Clark does say:
I think it's not yet time to use force against Iraq but it is certainly time to put that card on the table, to turn it face up and to wave it and the president is doing that and I think that the United States Congress has to indicate after due consideration and consulting our people and building our resolve that yes, this is a significant security problem for the United States of America and all options are on the table including the use of force as necessary to solve this problem because I think that's what's required to leverage any hope of solving this problem short of war.and
I think the first thing is you have a very strong determination that's out in public and supported by this body that says if we don't get the assistance we need from the United Nations, as a last resort we will use force and we will solve the problem ourselves.In other words, threaten war, try to solve without war, but be ready to go to war if necessary. Remarks like these led me to believe that Clark supported the war. But Clark seems to disagree with Bush on when we have reached "the last resort," which makes him a member of the "I would have supported the war if...." club, which achieves an anti-war position by setting conditions for war that are never going to be met. Clark talks like a typical member of the club here:
We have to work this problem in a way to gain worldwide legitimacy and understanding for the concerns that we rightly feel and for our leadership. This is what U.S. leadership in the world must be. We must bring others to share our views not be too quick to rush to try to impose them even if we have the power to do so.This is the view that if we just use enough diplomacy everyone will come around to our way of thinking. France and Russia were two of the largest suppliers of Saddam's weapons (much more than the US), had huge oil contracts with Iraq, and could gain more international power by opposing the US (indeed enjoying us taken down a peg) than by supporting us. Those are all big motivators. It would not be in their short-term interests to depose Saddam. In terms of alleviating a source of worry over WMD proliferation and terrorism, they knew it would be in their long-term interests (show me one official statement from the UN or any UNSC member - even France - saying "nyah, nyah - you thought Saddam had WMDs but he doesn't!"), but their short -term interests were too compelling. Then you have most of the regimes of the Middle East which hated and feared Saddam but were not going to side with the Colonialist Imperialist Infidel (TM) against one of their own, and all their satellites and customers. The rest of the world was going to join us or not based on their other alliances or perceived interests as well.
So we could win some over by talking nice, but there is this illusion of perfect control, that "if people don't do what I want, it's because I didn't do X." In real life, you give it your best shot, but people have many reasons for their decisions that have nothing to do with your charisma or logic or bribes or the rightness of your cause. This is not an excuse for not trying to be diplomatic, but "diplomacy" is not a magic potion which bends all others to your will.
Clark says:
"Such congressional resolution need not, at this point, authorize the use of force. The more focused the resolution on Iraq, the more focused it is on the problems of weapons of mass destruction. The greater its utility in the United Nations, the more nearly unanimous the resolution, the greater its utility is, the greater its impact is on the diplomatic efforts underway. The president and his national security team have got to deploy imagination, leverage, and patience in working through the United Nations. In the near term, time is on our side and we should endeavor to use the United Nations if at all possible. This may require a period of time for inspections or the development of a more intrusive inspection regime such as Richard Perle has mentioned, if necessary backed by force.Bush went to the UN twice. It took a year. The pitch to the UN was focused on WMDs, because the UN's main beef with Iraq was over WMDs. After France sabotaged the UNSC resolutions twice, there were no more steps to take. But the "I would have supported the war if...." club says that Bush "rushed to war" because he only went to the UN twice and then said "enough." They wanted us to keep going to the UN (which no other country ever does and which we didn't do in the Balkans) over and over. Forever.
So I guess Clark was against the war.
There are several other reasons why the "I would have supported the war if...." club never convinced me that its "last resort" should be mine, or Bush's. It tends to undermine its crediblity by misrepresenting the facts. It calls the war effort "unilateral" because the coalition of 40-odd countries doesn't include the countries it thinks should have been in it (i.e. half the UNSC). It argues that "the inspections were working," when Saddam was clearly gaming the inspectors. Finally, it tends to be unwilling to acknowledge that this is a very complex problem with no clear-cut right answer, and to ascribe dubious motives to those who come to a different conclusion about the right response to the threat - and the right time to cut bait. It's off-putting to be told that if a national leader (with millions of lives at stake) sets the bar for action lower than they do, his decision must be the result of mendacity, stupidity, or conspiracy.
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