Al Gore I Salute You

Here is a good read from the New Yorker. It is rather lengthy, but really defines Al Gore the politician and man. Here is one good excerpt that will get you started, notice the prediction in the Al Gore Quote........

In the summer of 2001, Gore had ended his silence and launched a public
critique of the Bush Administration with a speech in Florida. However, after the
terror attacks, he declared Bush “my Commander-in-Chief,” a gesture meant to
promote unity and not offend the national mood. But by September, 2002, as the
Bush Administration started its march toward a war in Iraq, Gore ended his
discretion with a withering speech at the Commonwealth Club, in San Francisco,
aimed at the Administration’s foreign policy. Gore, who was one of the few
Democrats to vote in favor of the 1991 resolution in Congress endorsing the
first Gulf War, now said that an American-led invasion of Iraq would undermine
the attempt to dismantle Al Qaeda and damage the multilateral ties necessary to
combat terrorism:
If we quickly succeed in a war against the weakened and
depleted fourth-rate military of Iraq, and then quickly abandon that nation, as President Bush has quickly abandoned almost all of Afghanistan after defeating a fifth-rate military power there, then the resulting chaos in the aftermath of a military victory in Iraq could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam.
Gore’s challenge to the Bush
White House to present real evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11
was, in both tone and substance, more critical than any speech yet delivered by
the candidates in the Democratic field. Suddenly, the prospect of a Gore
candidacy hit the media in a wave.
“I wasn’t surprised by Bush’s economic
policies, but I was surprised by the foreign policy, and I think he was, too,”
Gore told me. “The real distinction of this Presidency is that, at its core, he
is a very weak man. He projects himself as incredibly strong, but behind closed
doors he is incapable of saying no to his biggest financial supporters and his
coalition in the Oval Office. He’s been shockingly malleable to Cheney and
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and the whole New American Century bunch. He was rolled
in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. He was too weak to resist it.
“I’m not of
the school that questions his intelligence,” Gore went on. “There are different
kinds of intelligence, and it’s arrogant for a person with one kind of
intelligence to question someone with another kind. He certainly is a master at
some things, and he has a following. He seeks strength in simplicity. But, in
today’s world, that’s often a problem. I don’t think that he’s weak
intellectually. I think that he is incurious. It’s astonishing to me that he’d
spend an hour with his incoming Secretary of the Treasury and not ask him a
single question. But I think his weakness is a moral weakness. I think he is a
bully, and, like all bullies, he’s a coward when confronted with a force that
he’s fearful of. His reaction to the extravagant and unbelievably selfish wish
list of the wealthy interest groups that put him in the White House is
obsequious. The degree of obsequiousness that is involved in saying ‘yes, yes,
yes, yes, yes’ to whatever these people want, no matter the damage and harm done
to the nation as a whole—that can come only from genuine moral cowardice. I
don’t see any other explanation for it, because it’s not a question of
principle. The only common denominator is each of the groups has a lot of money
that they’re willing to put in service to his political fortunes and their
ferocious and unyielding pursuit of public policies that benefit them at the
expense of the nation.”

Hail Gore!