Even Joe Klein (no conservative, he) is on Clark’s back about his stance on the $87 billion. Like myself, and William Saletan, Klein finds Clark’s position to be problematic (shall we say), or as Klein himself wrote last week in Time
Clark’s initial position was laughable. He refused to say how he would vote on the $87 billion because he wasn’t a member of Congress. Chastened by a Washington Post editorial that called his position “astonishing,” he retreated: the $87 billion, he said, should be sent “back to the drawing board.” The general was suffering from laryngitis when I called, so an aide told me that Clark favored two separate bills. One would be money for the troops; the other would be for reconstruction — with a dollar amount scrubbed more carefully than the Bush Administration’s rather flabby $20 billion and with greater international cooperation, a quicker, clearer transition to Iraqi authority and restrictions on the contracts going to American corporations like Halliburton.
He goes on to note that most of the Nine have incoherent positions on the $87 billion as well (all but Lieberman and Gephardt).