Clark was a three-star (lieutenant general) who directed strategic plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington. On Aug. 26, 1994, in the northern Bosnian city of Banja Luka, he met and exchanged gifts with the notorious Bosnian Serb commander and indicted war criminal, Gen. Ratko Mladic. The meeting took place against the State Department's wishes and may have contributed to Clark's failure to be promoted until political pressure intervened. The shocking photo of Mladic and Clark wearing each other's military caps was distributed throughout Europe.

“The Clark Rule: whenever the general is found talking alone to a Serb, Croat or Muslim, make sure an American civilian official rushes to his side.”U.S. diplomats warned Clark not to go to Bosnian Serb military headquarters to meet Mladic, considered by U.S. intelligence as the mastermind of the Srebrenica massacre of Muslim civilians (and still at large, sought by NATO peacekeeping forces). Besides the exchange of hats, they drank wine together, and Mladic gave Clark a bottle of brandy and a pistol.

This was what U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke's team seeking peace in Yugoslavia tried to avoid by instituting the "Clark Rule": whenever the general is found talking alone to a Serb, Croat or Muslim, make sure an American civilian official rushes to his side. It produced some comic opera dashes by diplomats.

After Clark's meeting with Mladic, the State Department cabled embassies throughout Europe that there was no change in policy toward the Bosnian Serbs. The incident cost Victor Jackovich his job as U.S. ambassador to Bosnia, even though he protested Clark's course. The upshot came months later, when Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic, in bitter negotiations with Holbrooke, handed Clark back his Army hat.

As a boot-in-mouth politician, however, Clark ranks with Arnold Schwarzenegger. He began by claiming to have been pressured to stop his defeatist wartime CNN commentary by someone "around the White House"; challenged, he morphed that source into a Canadian Middle East think tank, equally fuzzy.

Worse, as his Clinton handlers cringed, he blew his antiwar appeal by telling reporters "I probably would have voted for" the Congressional resolution authorizing Bush to invade Iraq. Next day, the chastised candidate flip-flopped, claiming "I would never have voted for war."

“I would have been a Republican,” Clark told them, “if Karl Rove had returned my phone calls.”