Well, like a bad penny, Al Gore keeps turning up. Here is the full text of a long, confused, hate-filled rant Gore disguised as a speech at an event sponsored by MoveOn.org PAC. The speech was a long, winding trip down an odd rabbit hole. Personally, I think the guy is nuts and still being fueled by his 2000 loss. He needs to get over it. He didn’t run against Bush this time around, so he can’t prove that he was robbed in 2000, and his delirious rant certainly isn’t going to help Kerry or the Democratic Party. But then again, Kerry does seem like a pussycat compared to Gore…
My buddy Slubgob deconstructs Gore’s rant quite nicely. Hindrocket over at Powerline does as well citing this Al Gore quote from September 23, 2002 that is now used to refute some of his own claims during his seething rant:
“We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.
Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.”
Al, you can’t have it both ways. Either they existed, as you said in 2002, or they don’t as you raved in 2004. He’s pulling a “Kerry”.
Joe Carter also weighs in on Gore’s lunacy over at Evangelical Outpost. Al Gore’s misinformed ranting:
“And the worst still lies ahead. General Joseph Hoar, the former head of the Marine Corps, said "I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss."
When a senior, respected military leader like Joe Hoar uses the word "abyss," then the rest of us damn well better listen."
Joe Carter’s response:
“Such a slip up might be excusable from an ordinary politician. But if it weren’t for a handful of voters in Florida, Al Gore would be the current Commander in Chief of the U.S. military. The fact that he confuses the CENTCOM CinC for the Commandant of the Marine Corps shows that he is completely clueless about military affairs. While Gore was Vice President, Hoar served as one of the most powerful command positions in the military. Yet it appears that Gore didn't even know who Hoar was before one of his speechwriters provided him with the General's quote. Such ineptitude is downright frightning.”
I still maintain that if Al Gore had become president, not only would 9/11 have happened, but there would be operating Al Qaeda terror cells in the U.S. attacking this country’s citizens regularly. Al Gore would have crippled this country’s ability to retaliate against Al Qaeda and all terrorists around world.
Here is another tidbit from Mr. Gore’s delusional visions that are refuted:
“The President convinced a majority of the country that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11th. But in truth he had nothing whatsoever to do with it. The President convinced the country with a mixture of forged documents and blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league with Al Qaeda, and that he was "indistinguishable" from Osama bin Laden.
He asked the nation, in his State of the Union address, to "imagine" how terrified we should be that Saddam was about to give nuclear weapons to terrorists and stated repeatedly that Iraq posed a grave and gathering threat to our nation. He planted the seeds of war, and harvested a whirlwind. And now, the "corrupt tree" of a war waged on false premises has brought us the "evil fruit" of Americans torturing and humiliating prisoners.”
Well, Mr. Gore, let OpinionJournal.com inform us about the President’s “imagined” threat regarding Saddam:
“One thing we've learned about Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein is that the former dictator was a diligent record keeper. Coalition forces have found--literally--millions of documents. These papers are still being sorted, translated and absorbed, but they are already turning up new facts about Saddam's links to terrorism.
We realize that even raising this subject now is politically incorrect. It is an article of faith among war opponents that there were no links whatsoever--that "secular" Saddam and fundamentalist Islamic terrorists didn't mix. But John Ashcroft's press conference yesterday reminds us that the terror threat remains, and it seems especially irresponsible for journalists not to be open to new evidence. If the CIA was wrong about WMD, couldn't it have also missed Saddam's terror links?
One striking bit of new evidence is that the name Ahmed Hikmat Shakir appears on three captured rosters of officers in Saddam Fedayeen, the elite paramilitary group run by Saddam's son Uday and entrusted with doing much of the regime's dirty work. Our government sources, who have seen translations of the documents, say Shakir is listed with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.
This matters because if Shakir was an officer in the Fedayeen, it would establish a direct link between Iraq and the al Qaeda operatives who planned 9/11. Shakir was present at the January 2000 al Qaeda "summit" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at which the 9/11 attacks were planned. The U.S. has never been sure whether he was there on behalf of the Iraqi regime or whether he was an Iraqi Islamicist who hooked up with al Qaeda on his own.
As others have reported, at the time of the summit Shakir was working at the Kuala Lumpur airport, having obtained the job through an Iraqi intelligence agent at the Iraqi embassy. The four-day al Qaeda meeting was attended by Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi, who were at the controls of American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon. Also on hand were Ramzi bin al Shibh, the operational planner of the 9/11 attacks, and Tawfiz al Atash, a high-ranking Osama bin Laden lieutenant and mastermind of the USS Cole bombing. Shakir left Malaysia on January 13, four days after the summit concluded.
That's not the only connection between Shakir and al Qaeda. The Iraqi next turned up in Qatar, where he was arrested on September 17, 2001, four days after the attacks in the U.S. A search of his pockets and apartment uncovered such information as the phone numbers of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers' safe houses and contacts. Also found was information pertaining to a 1995 al Qaeda plot to blow up a dozen commercial airliners over the Pacific.
After a brief detention, our friends the Qataris inexplicably released Shakir, and on October 21 he flew to Amman, Jordan. The Jordanians promptly arrested him, but under pressure from the Iraqis (and Amnesty International, which questioned his detention) and with the acquiescence of the CIA, they let him go after three months. He was last seen heading home to Baghdad.”
The tie might not be as “imagined” as Mr. Gore thought. Hindrocket of Powerline once again:
“Iraq was, to a degree that is still unknown, involved in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. It now appears that Saddam had a hand in the 2001 attack as well. The only doubt at this point would appear to be the possibility that the "Ahmed Hikmat Shakir" who was an officer in the Fedayeen might be a different person with the same name as the al Qaeda operative who helped plan the Sept. 11 attacks. If I were a member of the administration, I would devote a great deal of effort to investigating Col. Shakir, and tracking him down if he is still alive.”
And still more from Hindrocket:
“I could go on, but I'll stop for now. There is simply too much falsehood and confusion in Gore's speech for any one person to deconstruct. We should perhaps divide his tirade by paragraphs and parcel out to websites in the blogosphere--the Northern Alliance, for example, with help from others, since the job is so vast--the task of refuting Gore's misrepresentations and libels, one by one.
In the meantime, you should read his speech. Read it, and weep for our country, because this deranged partisan hack was once Vice-President of the United States.”
I think that final comment sums things up nicely. It would take the entire blogosphere to take apart Gore's speech and correct all his egregious partisan errors. Dean found out that giving "angry" speeches turned the voters off, hence his quick plummet from grace. Let's hope that Gore's delerious, hate-filled ranting will do the same thing for Kerry in November. Mr. Gore should talk to his doctor about a medication change, or better yet an increase.
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