"The Right Angle"

Heidi Parent

Back in the Race?

Al Gore tries to remain relevant

by Heidi Parent
08/16/03

August is notoriously a slow news month in Washington. Congress is in a recess and President Bush has headed to the Crawford heat. (I know he likes Texas, but I have this secret hope that he goes there just to cheese off the media who have to go along and cover him.) Furthermore, even though this is the summer before an election year and the campaigns are gearing up, all the candidates are providing so far is a cacophony of Bush bashing that can be summed up simply as "Bush is wrong about everything in the history of everything and we hate him." Not very interesting reading. In short, with not much happening, columnists have to look far and wide for a topic. But just when I thought the well was dry, along comes Al Gore.

In a recent speech before the liberal anti-war group MoveOn.Org, Al fell right back into campaign 2000 mode. In other words, he was lying. With the Democrat Party Talking Points firmly in hand, Al said the War in Iraq was based on "one mistaken impression after another." Al specifically cites, to his mind anyway, six:

"What we now know to have been false impressions before the war include the following:

Number one, Saddam Hussein was partly responsible for the attack against us on September 11th, 2001…" (Wow, right out of the box the biggest lie of all. Cite for me one time, Al, when anyone in the Bush White House stated that Saddam was responsible for September 11th? If that were the case, the argument should not have been why Iraq, but instead why have we waited almost two years after 9/11 to remove him. No, this "Saddam is behind 9/11" claim was created by liberals for no other reason than to have it to argue against in their efforts to rebuke the grounds for war.)

"Number two, Saddam was working closely with Osama bin Laden and was actively supporting members of al Qaeda…" (I don't know anyone who said Saddam and al Qaeda were "working closely", but there is intelligence, like it or not Al, linking members of Saddam's government to al Qaeda. Czech intelligence cites a meeting between Mohammad Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001. And Secretary of State Powell, in testimony to the UN, confirmed Iraq reached a "non-aggression" pact with al Qaeda in the early to mid-1990s. Furthermore, Powell has also stated the U.S. has evidence that bin Laden met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in 1996. Sorry.)

"Number three, Saddam was about to give the terrorists poison gas and deadly germs…" ("About to give" as in a truck loaded with WMD was on its way to downtown Terrorist Central? I don't think that was the case. But we know for a fact that Saddam was openly providing financial support to Hamas and other terrorist groups. So if a history of support was there, how could any reasonable president sit by and wait for Saddam to provide weapons of mass destruction to anti-American terrorist groups? Moreover, Bush never said Saddam posed an imminent threat. If he had, there would have been no need for debate. Reacting to an imminent threat is a no-brainer for most, Al. Instead what Bush did say is that after 9/11 we better recognize the threat terrorist groups like al Qaeda pose and therefore it was in our best interest to act preemptively.)

"Number four, Saddam was on the verge of building nuclear bombs…" (Saddam's quest for nuclear weapons goes back further than your tenure in the White House. Or didn't Bill allow you to see those intelligence briefings?)

"Number five, our GIs would be welcomed with open arms by cheering Iraqis who would help them quickly establish public safety, free markets and representative democracy…" (You're wrong here on two counts, Al. First, they were welcomed with open arms. Didn't you see the coverage of Iraqis rejoicing on April 9th as statues of Saddam fell throughout Baghdad or any of the rejoicing that has taken place since? Apparently not. But even those Iraqis with a more guarded response are understandable. They want to make sure Saddam is really, really, positively truly, completely and absolutely gone before they join the conga line. After all, Saddam had people killed for even thinking about thinking bad thoughts about him. Tony Blankley said it best, "Iraqis have been in a dark room for 30 years and we have just switched on the light. We need to give their eyes time to adjust." So let's wait awhile and give the fact that Saddam is not coming back some time to sink into their persecuted skulls. In the meantime, you cannot dispute the fact that we have Iraqis to thank for providing information that has lead us to Uday and Qusay, numerous Baath party leaders, thousands of intelligence documents, hidden stashes of money, etc. I don't know your definition of "welcoming" but these actions surely aren't hostile. Secondly, "quickly establish"? Not one time did President Bush claim that rebuilding Iraq would be easy or happen quickly. Quite the contrary. However, as Defense Secretary Rumsfeld pointed out in a recent speech, tremendous progress has occurred in the few short months we've been there: The formation of an Iraqi national army has begun, over 30,000 Iraqi police have been hired, an Iraqi civil defense corps is being formed, coalition forces have captured or killed 38 of Iraq's 55 most wanted, thousands of lower-level Baath Party loyalists have been rounded up, the Iraqi Central Bank has been made independent, all of Iraq's universities have reopened, power and water are, in most places, at prewar levels, the food redistribution system has been restarted, nearly all of Iraq's 240 hospitals and 1,200 clinics are open, over 100 newspapers have begun publishing, and Iraq has returned to the world oil market.)

"Number six, even though the rest of the world was mostly opposed to the war, they would quickly fall in line after we won…" (What "rest?" The fact is over 50 countries are providing support in Iraq in one way or another. Which, by the way, is a larger coalition than we had in the first Gulf War.)

"Now, of course, everybody knows that every single one of these impressions was just dead wrong." (No, what everybody knows, yet again Al, is that you and your party will never pass up an opportunity to rewrite history.)

But perhaps the most ironic part of the speech is this accusation: "Robust debate in a democracy will almost always involve occasional rhetorical excesses and leaps of faith… But there is a big difference between that and a systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a totalistic ideology that is felt to be more important than the mandates of basic honesty." (My italics.) Can you believe it? This has to be the biggest pot-calling-the-kettle-black moment in the history of pot-calling-the-kettle-black-moments.

All of which brings me to the rumor floating around Washington that Al Gore is contemplating another run at the White House. A few months ago when Al announced he wouldn't be running, I predicted a well placed ground swell calling on Gore to reconsider. Lo and behold we now have former New York Governor Mario Cuomo calling on the former VP to enter the race. Days after Cuomo's request, Al quietly requested permission to speak in front of MoveOn.Org. Hmm. Interesting.

Of course, August 2003 is a bit early for the groundswell to reach its crescendo, so Al's camp is denying it. "The vice president is not going to be a candidate in 2004," said Gore spokesman Michael Feldman. But since when does a denial mean anything? Give it a few months. In the meantime, I stand by my prediction. Come 2004, Al's name will be on the ballot. Time to begin compiling Gore's Book of Lies, Volume 67.