I found Al Gore’s speech interesting. He did not mince his words and launched a direct attack on Bush’s policy about Iraq. In fact, he did provide many references to prove that Bush did deceive the American nation as well as whole world on Iraq’s issue by purpose. Al Gore refused to buy the generally accepted notion that Bush is a simple and straightforward person who does not know how to play mind games. On the contrary, Al gore insisted that Bush is a smart person, smarter than most of us, who used 911 issue for Iraq war quite smartly.
I have cut and pasted only those portions of his speech that are relevant to Iraq. Please refer to the web link for a complete transcript of his speech.
Transcript: The Failed Presidency of George W. Bush
Remarks as delivered by former Vice President Al Gore
Gaston Hall at Georgetown University
Monday, October 18, 2004
During this series of speeches, I have tried hard to understand what it is that gives so many Americans an uneasy feeling that something very basic has gone wrong in our democracy. There are many people in both political parties who worry that there is something deeply troubling about President Bush’s relationship to reason, about his disdain for facts, his incuriosity about new information that might produce a deeper understanding of the problems and policies that he wrestles with on behalf of the country.
Most of the problems President Bush has caused for this country stemmed not from his belief in God but his belief in the infallibility of the right-wing Republican ideology that exalts the interest of the wealthy, and of large corporations over and above the interests of the American people. It is love of power for its own sake that is the original sin of this presidency.
Most dangerous of all, this Bush ideology promotes the making of policy in secret, based on information that is not available to the public and in a process that is insulated from any meaningful participation by Congress or the American people. When Congress’s approval is required under our current Constitution, it is to be given without meaningful debate. As Bush said to one Republican senator in a meeting described in Time magazine – and I quote from the magazine’s account – “Look, I want your vote – I’m not going to debate it with you.”
In one of the speeches that I have a year ago last August, I proposed that one reason why the normal processes of our democracy have seemed dysfunctional is that our nation acquired a large number of false impressions about the choices before us including for example that – the false impression that Saddam Hussein was the person primarily responsible for attacking us on September 11th, 2001. According to Time magazine again, 70 percent thought that in November of 2002. Or, to take another example, an impression that there was a tight linkage and close partnership and cooperation between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, between the terrorist group al Qaeda, which did attack us, and Iraq which did not. And the impression that Saddam had a massive supply of weapons of mass destruction and that he was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons, and that he was about to give nuclear weapons to the al Qaeda terrorist group, which would then use them against American cities. Also the impression was widely shared that Iraq would welcome our invading army with garlands of flowers. And even though the rest of the world opposed the war when it began, they would quickly fall in line after we won, and then they’d contribute lots of money and soldiers, so there wouldn’t be a risk that our taxpayers would foot the whole bill. And, in any case, there would be more than enough money from Iraqi oil supplies which would flow in abundance quickly after the invasion – we could use that money to offset expenses, and the net cost to America would be zero. The impression also was widespread was that the size of the force required would be relatively small and would not put a strain on our military or our reserves, and would not jeopardize other commitments we have around the world. Now, of course every single one of these impressions was wrong.
And, unfortunately, the consequences have been catastrophic for our country. And the plague of false impressions seem to settle on other policy debates as well. For example, in considering President Bush’s gigantic tax cut, many somehow got the impression that first the majority of that tax cut would not go disproportionately to the wealthy but would go to the middle class; second, that it would not lead to large deficits, because it would stimulate the economy so much it would pay for itself; and, third, not only would there be no job losses, but we would have big increases in employment as a result. And of course, as everyone knows, here to every one of these impressions was completely wrong.
Now, last year I did not accuse the president of intentionally deceiving the American people, but rather noted the remarkable coincidence that all of his arguments turned out to be based on falsehoods. But since that time we have learned from information that has become public in a variety of ways that in virtually every case the president chose to ignore, and indeed often to suppress studies, reports, information, facts, that were directly contrary to the false impressions he was in the process of giving to the American people. In most every case he chose to reject information that was prepared for him by objective analysts and to rely instead on information that was prepared by sources of questionable reliability who had a private interest in the policy choice that the president was recommending – a choice that was conflicted with the public interest. For example, when the president and his team were confidently asserting that Saddam Hussein had aluminum tubes that had been acquired in order to enrich uranium for atomic bombs, numerous experts at the Department of Energy and elsewhere in the intelligence community were certain that the information being presented to our country by the president was completely wrong. The true experts on uranium enrichment are at Oak Ridge, where most enrichment has taken place in the U.S., in my home state of Tennessee. They told me early on that in their opinion there was virtually zero possibility that the tubes in question were for the purpose of enrichment. And yet they received a directive at Oak Ridge forbidding them from making any public statement that disagreed with the assertions being made to the people by President Bush.
In another example, we now know that two months before the Iraq war began, President Bush received detailed and comprehensive secret reports warning him that the likely result of an American-led invasion of Iraq would be increased support for Islamic fundamentalism, deep divisions in Iraqi society, high levels of violent internal conflict and guerrilla warfare aimed at U.S. forces.
And yet in spite of those analyses, President Bush chose to suppress those warnings, conceal that information, and instead went right on conveying to the American people the absurdly Pollyanna-ish view of highly questionable and obviously biased sources like Ahmad Chalabi, the convicted felon and known swindler, who the Bush administration put on its payroll and gave a seat adjacent to First Lady Laura Bush at the State of the Union address, who they then flew into Baghdad on a military jet with a private security force, but then the following year decided was actually a spy for Iran who had been hoodwinking the president all along with phony facts and false predictions.
There is a growing tension between President Bush’s portrait of the situation in which we find ourselves and the real facts on the ground. In fact, his entire agenda is collapsing around his ankles. Iraq is in flames, with a growing U.S. casualty rate and a growing prospect of a civil war, with the attendant chaos and risk of an Islamic fundamentalist state.
America’s moral authority in the world has been severely damaged, and our ability to persuade others to follow our lead has virtually disappeared. The latest to announce they are beginning to withdraw from the coalition are Poland and Italy. (Scattered applause.) Our troops, because they are already bearing more than 90 percent of the burden borne by non-Iraqis, are stretched thin, under-supplied, and placed in intolerable situations without adequate equipment or training.
