Not that Al Gore ever ‘had it’ – - but this is pure sour grapes coming home to roost.
Gore calls for resignations of Rumsfeld, Tenet, Rice
Al Gore delivered a blistering denunciation Wednesday of the Bush administration’s “twisted values and atrocious policies” in Iraq and demanded the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA director George Tenet.
Raising his voice to a yell in a speech at New York University, Gore said: “How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace! How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein torture prison!”
The Democratic former vice president said the situation in Iraq is spinning out of control.
“I am calling today for Republicans as well as Democrats to join me in asking for the immediate resignations of those immediately below George Bush and Dick Cheney (news – web sites), who are most responsible for creating the catastrophe we are facing in Iraq,” Gore said, drawing strong applause from the partisan crowd.
“Donald Rumsfeld ought to resign immediately!” Gore bellowed. “Our nation is at risk every single day Rumsfeld remains as secretary of defense. We need someone with good judgment and common sense.”
Rice “ought to resign immediately. She has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy. This is a disaster for our country,” he said.
“It came from twisted values and atrocious policies at the highest levels of our government,” he said.
The former presidential candidate was gentler on Tenet, a Clinton administration appointee, describing him as a friend and “honorable man” who should still leave his position for intelligence failures.
The Republican National Committee shot back at Gore, pointing out that while he was vice president terrorists attacked U.S. embassies in Africa, bombed the USS Cole and carried out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
“Al Gore’s attacks on the president today demonstrate that he either does not understand the threat of global terror or he has amnesia,” RNC spokesman Jim Dyke said in a statement.
Not amnesia. Selective memory.
Selective liberal memory.
Holy crap! Algore looks like a blow up doll…
Ted
or he looks like a doll about to blow up… well maybe not so much like a doll…
all I have to say is… AL GORE WHO!?
Now his support for Dean makes perfect sense…
Seems to me that, once again, Gore wants to return to the policies of Clinton; that is to not pay attention to your NSA and CIA director and effectively to incapacitate the government… one thing I want to know is… which administration did he have in mind when he said “It came from twisted values and atrocious policies at the highest levels of our government,” I think he was on a bad trip back to the days when he was in office… because if any president in the last few decades had ‘twisted and atrocious policies’ it was definitely the Clinton-Clinton-Gore administration… (remember, Hillary thought that first lady was really second President…)
he is just an ass…..
LOL…possible cap for this picture:
“Go impeach Donald and Connie, then go see that movie ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ about the threat of global warming — never mind the fact that there’s actually a blizzard — because hey, I said so, and doggone it, I am the Inventor of the Internet, not to mention that true President of the United States! So there — nyah!” LOL…
PS: What the heck is that man doing to his hair?!? It looks thinner than cellophane!!!
Okay, you found a picture of Mr. Gore looking ridiculous. But there are plenty of pictures of President Bush looking ridiculous as well.
What happened to the Bush haters who used to post on this site? Everyone is too pro-Bush now.
hence the name of the site!
You betcha I’m Pro-Bush Zelda. Every single thing I hear from the liberal left just makes me want to puke. Their hatred spews out of their mouths with such venom I think I’m in another country. Their candidate Kerry is a joke, Kennedy is an idiot and some of the people in their party who do make sense (Lieberman, Zell Miller) they don’t give a rats ass about. This country needs two parties for the checks and balances that creates but what we don’t need is anti-american, anti-military rhetoric. I, for one, am tired of it.
Well Zelda, if it is any consolation I do not agree at all with Bush’s immigration policies. I also dislike that he is so pro-coporate. And finally I disagree with his budget policies- he isn’t fiscally conservative enough for my tastes.
Ted
Well, Bush has done a thing or two to leave me a bit unsettled, not the least of which is the immigration policy and his Mission to Mars, the latter of which I think is a bit of a waste of money.
However, that doesn’t mean I’m going to love the likes of Clinton, Gore or Kerry any time soon. I consider myself pretty settled where my conservative beliefs are concerned, and if I have problems with the liberal mindset or the liberal histrionics of the likes of Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo, then so be it.
And no, that does not mean I do not have a problem with Rush Limbaugh’s ego. I have problems with ego in general, and I find Rush’s ego as unsettling as any liberal.
I agree with you AG, but I would like to clarify the “mission to Mars” you mentioned, because I think there’s a huge misconception about that initiative and, as an astrophysicist, it hits kind of close to home.
Bush’s space policy isn’t as crazy as it’s been made out to be. The fact is that NASA has been stagnating for decades now with limited budgets and missions. They’ve basically been a ferry service for satellites and have had little to do with real science for a long time. They’ve needed some direction and support from government to get back on track, and this has provided it. The media has made it sound like we’re dropping a ton of money to send people to Mars, but that’s not the case at all. Mars is a future goal; the immediate goal is to advance our presence in space, starting with going to the moon again. The actual cost is spread out over decades and requires only a small increase in NASA’s budget, with the main goal of developing new technologies in propulsion and studying the ability of humans to survive in extreme environments.
This is really a good thing, and I applaude president Bush for having the guts to propose this controversial initiative. NASA has done very little in the last couple decades in the way of real science (compared to political crap like the space station), but now they finally have a goal again. It may sound like science fiction, but the technological benefits will be great.
Basically, what I’m saying is don’t believe the rhetoric about the new space initiatives. I’ve followed this pretty closely since Bush first proposed it, and I think it’s a great plan. We’re finally going to get NASA out of the taxi business and back into real science, and almost all the cost is coming from restructuring NASA’s budget, not increasing it. Give it a chance and I think you’ll see it’s one of president Bush’s greatest achievements.
Zelda,
The problem with the picture is not that it makes Al Gore look “ridiculous,” but it shows him as what he has become – a strident, whiney, sore loser of a brat.
Somewhere along the road, Al Gore lost his backbone. His defining moment for me was that during the Clinton / Lewinsky fiasco, Al Gore was no where to be found. It almost seemed as if he was scared to be covered by the scandel that his boss had created.
Al Gore could have been out there saying a variety of things about how Clinton made a mistake, or how Clinton was still a good friend, or how many men make the same mistake as Clinton had, or that the rancour from the “right” was “all about sex,” (as many Democratic leaders wrongfully charged.)
Instead, Al Gore hid. He did nothing. Apparently the price of defending and standing by the man that picked him to be the Vice President was too high of a cost for Al Gore to pay.
He went and hid.
He resurfaced to lead a campaign for the President that was full of lies and deceptions, and to me that was the beginning of his path toward being the strident, lying, whiney wimp he has become now.
The picture posted here and in other places is much like the picture of Dorian Gray. It is a glimpse of what Al Gore actually is, rather than what he pretends to be.
It is terribly sad in a way. In many ways before the defining moment, I rather liked Gore. However, in that defining moment, he showed a lack of intestinal fortitude that I would never want in the Oval Office.
If you want an interesting read from someone who writes better than I do (as if THAT is a difficult task,) go here:
http://news.bostonherald.com/opinion/view.bg?articleid=29658
Take care.
I understand where you’re coming from where the Mission to Mars is concerned, Lee. Truth to be told, however, my understanding is that the hope is to prove a theory that I don’t think can be proven scientifically, ie the theory of the origin of man and the notion that man is, effectively, alien in so many words, that life originated from Mars, etc., etc.
To me, Neil Armstrong’s ultimate walk on the moon made sense. Russia had made America nervous with a little satellite called Sputnik, so naturally America was eager to carve out their own frontiers and put a man on the moon by the end of the sixties.
However, during the sixties, thanks in no small part to the post-WWII economic boom, America was a lot better off financially then than now. That’s where my concern for putting a lot of money into “Missions to Mars” comes from.
Wanting to get back into the space program is one thing, though I have my misgivings about it. I also feel (jmo, of course) that man has pretty much gone as far as we can go as far as exploration is concerned. It has been proven that the world is round, America has become completely inhabited and independent, and man has already ventured out into space, rendering it no longer “The Great Unknown.” Now, at least imo, I feel we should concentrate on more important matters, such as keeping our families safe from terrorists and keeping jobs in the US.
AG, I think you misunderstand the whole thing. Yes, I agree that the war on terror is more important, and I would agree if Bush’s plan really did cost a lot more, but it doesn’t. Almost all of the funding is coming from within NASA’s current budget; Bush only asked for an increase of $1 billion spread over 5 years. That’s a spit in the bucket, and we can handle both. For some good details about many aspects of the plan look at this article. As far as job creation is concerned, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done at all levels to support this plan; it’ll create jobs.
There’s more to it than the ideas you gave. People throughout history have thought that man has gone as far as he can. Truth is we have a long ways to go, and I don’t think stopping research is a smart way to look at it. If we thought that way, we probably wouldn’t have things like computers, tv, cars, air conditioning, etc, etc, today.
Many of our greatest achievements have come about as a direct result of space research, most importantly in the field of medicine. Going into space requires intimate knowledge of human physiology and the ability to monitor health remotely with more reliable and smaller equipment. Many major breakthroughs in medicine are direct spin-offs of this kind of research; imagine what we may develop as we solve the puzzle of how to keep humans alive for 6 months in deep space in a high radiation environment! Bush’s plan will almost surely provide important benefits to the rest of us in areas unrelated to space.
I’m a little troubled by the fact that you think it’s important to push science when there’s a political objective (beating the Russians to space) but not to support it for it’s own sake. In my opinion there’s nothing more important than continuing to seek answers to the ultimate questions; you never know what you’ll find. At the turn of the century, we thought we knew all there was to know in the world of physics. Then came people like Einstein and Heisenberg and we saw a revolution in science with the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. Let’s face it, we don’t know what we don’t know, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ask the questions and try to find out!
Anyway, give it a chance. It’s costing us almost nothing we aren’t spending already, and I think that we as a nation are more than capable of rubbing our tummies and patting our heads at the same time…
PS, sorry for getting so off-topic Lisa
I just read an article that illustrates my point beautifully about practical spin-offs from research: electricity from poop. I found it interesting (and amusing) and thought others might too.
People often forget that it is not always the destination that is beneficial, but the journey.
In order to get into space, stay there, and perhaps explore the universe further, the space program has had to develop technowledgies that resulted in the following real benefits:
Semiconductor design and materials (used in medical imaging devices as well as day to day electronics); structural analysis programs used for testing of cars, buildings, etc; aircraft controls, flight systems and aircraft management systems; food supplements including enriched babby food; water purification systems, scratch resistant plastic lens for eye glasses and windows; athletic and bip-physical training; materials for sneakers and shoes; photo-voltaic solar cells; air purification systems; smoke alarms; fire resistant materials (now used for baby clothing, blankets, etc); a viable heart pump; medical imaging systems for breast cancer; ultasound scanners; welding systems; cleaning technowledgies; air tanks for fire rescue teams; Doppler Radar; car and truck brake pad materials; etc.
http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html
You cannot walk through your home without seeing the impact of the space program on your daily life.
People think that space exploration is a goal with no benefits to the common man.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Take care.
Holy rising air batman al gore is flipping out and maybe we should consiter harnasing all that HOT AIR and solve a lot of problems or put some duct tape over gores mouth to contain all that HOT AIR
As a matter of fact, the Mars initiative is one of the many reasons I’m voting for Bush.
Our journey into space is necessary and inevitable, and it’s time we stopped whizzing around in circles in those glorified cargo planes we call the “space shuttle program”.
And we need to get to Mars before the Chinese, the Russians, or the EU.
And only a few years ago they were talking about the oppisite global cooling and now its global warming and here we have that fool al gore blabbering his big mouth off and how did al gore get there? did he walk,ride a bike,teliport,come by helicoptor,lear jet,did he flap his arms? here a good question to ask mr airhead
I agree snowy, about his hot air anyway… If there was global warming, now we know the cause of it… HEEEEEE