In reporting on Democrat presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark's flip-flop on whether he would support, the New York Times report spins like a Clark campaign operative.

On the third day of his campaign, Gen. Wesley K. Clark struggled today to clarify his statement on Thursday that he would "probably" have voted for the Congressional resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq.

General Clark, a former NATO commander who has retired from the Army, never denied making the statement in an interview with four reporters on his chartered plane. But he seemed stunned by the headlines that it generated, as supporters worried that he had undercut his position as an antiwar candidate with military bona fides.

"I never would have voted for war," he said here this afternoon in an interview and in response to a question after a lecture at the University of Iowa. "What I would have voted for is leverage. Leverage for the United States to avoid a war. That's what we needed to avoid a war."

Clarify his statement? This is nothing less than a full-fledged flip-flop.

Clark apparently wasn't pressed as to how exactly a resolution would have been worded that gave the president "leverage."

The Congress hereby resolves to give the President of the United States a two-by-four and a fulcrum...