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Wesley Clark faced sniping from a former military colleague as he opened his Virginia primary campaign.
In a teleconference with Virginia media yesterday, Clark said he would fight hard for veterans and middle-class families. He'll crisscross the state tomorrow and Saturday in a bus tour in search of support before Tuesday's Democratic primary.
Since Clark's name cropped up as a potential Democratic candidate, reports have circulated that he had alienated his military peers during his meteoric rise to becoming supreme allied commander, Europe, and leading the allies to victory against the Serbs in Kosovo. The reports have often been attributed to unnamed sources.
But this week, a former top military leader openly attacked Clark.
"You do not see any senior officers stand up behind Clark when he's at the podium," former Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill "Tony" McPeak said during a phone interview while campaigning in Virginia for Howard Dean.
"[John] Kerry has been very effective with his message [because] his old Army buddies are there with him," McPeak said. "That's great testimony. With Clark, you don't see much of that. Where are his West Point classmates, his battalion-mates? Where are the Army four-star [generals]?"
Clark was eager to talk about that yesterday, vehemently denying McPeak's contention that his military peers are not getting behind his campaign.
"I've got hundreds of West Point classmates supporting me," he said. "Some of them gave up jobs to work in my campaign. There are dozens of senior officers providing testimony."
Former Secretary of the Navy John Dalton and retired four-star Gen. Johnny E. Wilson have endorsed Clark. And Michael McClintic, a private who saved Clark's life in Vietnam, is working in the campaign.
McPeak said: "Look, let me say this--I know Wes Clark. And I know Howard Dean. And I'm working for Dean."
"I like General McPeak, but General McPeak never worked with me," said Clark, an Arkansas native, "and he doesn't know me. We sat next to each other one time at a dinner."
Perhaps this is the sort of thing that led his son, 34-year-old Wesley Clark Jr., to tell The Associated Press the campaign has been "a really disturbing experience.
"You go out and see the way politics really works," the younger Clark told the wire service. "It is a dirty business filled with a lot of people pretending to be a lot of things they are not."
Clinton Secretary of Defense William Cohen eventually relieved Clark of his command, reportedly for being too headstrong.
Gen. Clark said there's no truth to rumors that President Clinton, who is also from Little Rock, helped him up the ladder in the Army.
"I got promoted same way everybody else did," Clark said. "I never talked to Bill Clinton except when I went to a meeting. I worked for Gen. [John] Shalikashvili." Shalikashvili was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Clinton and is a Clark admirer.
Clark supporters say the negativity springs from jealousy.
"'Wes was just a bit too smart and too pretty for Army infantry," retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey told the Miami Herald in December. McCaffrey told the Herald the bad feelings began with an Esquire article in the late '70s that touted Clark as "probably the most brilliant junior officer now on active duty."
Clark said he has nothing for which to apologize.
"My military reputation is very, very important to me," he said. "I'm very proud of what I did in the military with all those guys."
Yesterday, Clark slammed the Bush administration for not taking care of veterans, saying the president has forgotten them, as well as the middle class as a whole.
And Clark said his own middle-class tax-cut proposal is the biggest of any candidate, calling for a family of four making $50,000 or less to pay no federal income tax.
Clark said he has middle-class roots.
"I started at the bottom," Clark said, referring to the fact that his biological father died at 4, a stepfather died when he was growing up and his mother, a secretary, essentially raised him on her own.
Coming off a victory in Oklahoma, he said he's going all out to win the Virginia primary. "We're going to play hard in Virginia and we're going to play to win."
That would seem to be the way Clark has always done things.
To reach MICHAEL ZITZ: 540/374-5408 mikez@freelancestar.com