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He acted like a party elder statesman. He also may have thought that the party might melt down and turn to him. While that may seem selfish, it was good that the Democrats had a Gore on reserve in case needed, so it was probably wise.
Al Gore’s endorsement may help, unless people start going back and actually taking a look at his record, which is hardly encouraging.
“We know that [Saddam Hussein ] 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 Gore, on September 23, 2002.
As a Gore fan, I wish he had done it a long time ago
I think he learned his lesson in 2004.
P.S. Nice try at a hijack, Mike.
Yes, Gore thought Iraq may be pursuing WMD… and he opposed the war (like myself).
Also, had Gore been Prez as the voters wanted him to, 9-11 probably wouldn’t have happened. And I was not a fan of 9-11.
Short of Gore owning a flux capacitor, I don’t see what justification you can make for that statement.
Farris,
He would have read the August 2001 PDB entitled “Al Qaeda Determined to Attack Inside United States.” He would have read the whole thing, not the two page summary with bullet points.
More importantly, he would have continued Bill Clinton’s weekly anti-terrorism meetings, which ceased when Bush took office.
While we’re on the subject, how did Bush canceling the anti-terrorism meetings help protect America? What was his plan to fight terrorism BEFORE 9/11 that included not talking about it?
Here’s the sequence: anti-terrorism meetings canceled, terrorists attack, Bush reads kids’ book and looks confused. Could there possibly be a connection?
Short of Gore owning a flux capacitor, I don’t see what justification you can make for that statement.
“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” Now watch this drive.
Any other questions, Einstein?
I’m not sure if one can go so far as to claim Gore would have prevented 9-11, though it is a known fact that Bush purposefully moved against the outgoing Clinton administration warning about al qaeda. Wolfowitz claimed Bin Laden was overrated as a threat, and Clinton era holdovers like Clarke were stymied as they tried to warn the new Administration. Presumably Gore would have carried on Clinton’s concerns about al qaeda and not let his guard down. BUT, that might not have been enough to stop 9-11. I suspect, however, Gore would have reacted to it in a manner that wouldn’t diminish US strength and interests to the extent Bush’s fiasco in Iraq and inability to close the deal in Afghanistan has.
Oliver,
Bravo on taking the “pet name” that Gore haters created and adopting it for use against them. I’ve been doing this as well, and I love how it robs them of a negative term. The more of us that do this kind of thing, the better.
Nicely don.
Assuming Gore wasn’t able to prevent 9-11, a few things would have been different on 9-11 in a Gore presidency. The World Trade Center would still be standing, the Pentagon wouldn’t have been hit, and the Republicans would have held impeachment hearings because Gore would have “carelessly and wrongly” shot down at least three of the hijacked planes. Something Bush couldn’t do because his administration fucked up the ability to have military jets intercept hijacked planes.
I disagree, Oliver. I think Gore’s endorsement is significant now. Or would you rather he endorse in the midst of our primary, so that the newspeople could spend all their time talking about what it means for Clinton, and whether he helps with working class whites, and whether Hillary’s pissed about it, and how was his relationship with Bill, and what about Monica Lewinsky costing him the election instead of the simple fact of the endorsement? It was nice, it was untainted by stupid newsies, and it was in Michigan.
I can’t say for certain that Gore would have prevented 9/11. I do think the 9/11 Commission Report would have been a little smaller, and included several more examples of things we were doing correctly instead of the myriad of things we were doing wrong.
I can also say that we might have finished the job in Afghanistan (as opposed to where we are today, when the Taliban took over several Afghani villages) and wouldn’t be quagmired in Iraq, where our enemies weren’t. That’s what would have come of electing a President with fewer daddy issues and cowboy complexes.
It was a great speech. He was in top form.
“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”
“McCain Determined to win Election”. Your point being?
Yeah, with Gore at the helm, there’s no possible way 9/11 happens. None whatsoever…
So, Farris, the Clinton administration acted and made it much more difficult for the terrorists to strike that way. Remember the millenium bombings? Exactly. Versus, an administration that couldn’t scramble air cover for over an hour when the country was under attack.
“Yeah, with Gore at the helm, there’s no possible way 9/11 happens. None whatsoever…”,/i>
So glad an oxygen thief would point that attack out eventually.
Clinton and Gore should have taken a page from the wingnut playbook and blamed Bush sr. for that one.
Furthermore at least some of the actual perpeterators were captured (vs. Osama Bin-somethin’) and lets also not forget the prevented attacks of LAX and the New York City landmark bomb plot that was stopped dead in its tracks.
It’s still a mystery if Farris’s secret plot to violently murder parody and irony in one fell swoop is still ongoing.
Clinton and Gore should have taken a page from the wingnut playbook and blamed Bush sr. for that one.
Bush Sr. does have some responsibility, as do Reagan and Carter. NONE of them realized the threat for what is was until after the fact, and because they collectively kicked the can down the road instead of tackling the problem head on, we got the result we did. Now that we know the seriousness of the threat, however, the question is what do we do about it.
The Bush doctrine is to eradicate it and cut it off BEFORE it happens. The Clinton/Kerry/Obama doctrine is to arrest everyone involved after the attack, hopefully after the debris stops smoking. In November, we’ll see which approach Americans prefer.
Credit where credit’s due. Under Clinton’s watch, the Millenium attack got stopped. He also, perhaps inadvertantly, semi-invented the terror alert system. Good for him. It just goes to show you that stopping one attack (Millenium) doesn’t exactly make up for all the times you miss (the first WTC, Khobar, Cole, Embassy, …)
Bush Sr. does have some responsibility, as do Reagan and Carter.
We may want to go back to Eisenhower, for approving the coup against Iranian Prime Minister Muhammed Mossadegh (whom my former roommate informed me is still one of the most popular figures in Iran, although the government is uncomfortable about acknowledging him because of the secular views he held). Perhaps also the CIA and the Mossad, both of whom taught SAVAK agents how to ‘interrogate’ Iranian students critical of the Shah, and were regularly present for those interrogations.
Carter, certainly, for many reasons. Brzezinski has admitted that the administration TRIED to draw the Soviets into Afghanistan covertly, to ‘give them their Vietnam.’ Whether or not that was the decisive factor in starting the war is probably impossible to know without access to the Kremlin’s archives, but that’s still pretty ugly in my book.
The Bush doctrine is to eradicate it and cut it off BEFORE it happens.
I think this is also the Putin doctrine in Chechnya. I wonder how many Muslims we have to kill before they’ll start to like us.
It sure as hell is a good thing Gore will support Obama. I guess Obama will have hard times to get all democrats to support him.
From my german point of view Obama should win, I believe with McCain the US-German relationship would cool down even further.
“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”
Any questions? No? OK, then.
It is interesting to speculate how the US would be so very different if Gore had taken the election. Think about it.
-Major polluters wouldn’t have a free ride
-9/11 may have happened anyway, but action would have been taken and Gore would not have stayed in that classroom for an extra 20 minutes.
-No Homeland Security agency, but a beefed up FEMA
-Katrina response would have been WAAAY better and faster. New Orleans would have been cleaned up by now.
-No invasion of the wrong country
-No conflation of the threat posed by Saddam
-No Haliburton, KBR or Bechtel no-bid contracts in perpetuity.
-No Blackwater
-No Abu Ghariab scandal
-No ‘black sites’
-No torture
-No wiretaps on US citizens
-No Valerie Plame scandal
-No US attorney firing scandal
…on and on and on.
Save Farris is an idiot.
He concedes that Clinton beefed up domestic anti-terror efforts and then points at a series of attacks that happened outside the country.
By his standards, Bush’s administration has been a dismal failure because of repeated attacks including 9-11, repeated shelling of the US green zone in Iraq, various attacks in Afghanistan, consular bombings around the world etc.
The Bush doctrine following 9-11 can be summed up as using the spectre of 9-11 to advance Bush’s political agendas. Iraq, elections, appointments, domestic spying, weakening the constitution…
- Katrina would have been the same, unless Gore abolished the positions of LA Governor and New Orleans Mayor and became a dictatorial overlord.
_ Haliburton was getting no-bid Contracts in the 1990’s too due to the fact they’re basically the only company that provides the services it does. If you don’t like it, you’re more than welcome to start up your own firm. More power to you, sir!
- No Attorney firing scandal? Really?!?
- No Conflation of the threat posed by Saddam? Really?!?
-No ‘black sites’: Why are you so racist?
Nothing like citing Brent Bozell as a source. Yet again the Good Housekeeping seal for mouthbreathers is gospel.
The majority of the attorneys under the Clinton administration were REPLACED you idiot, expected when a new administration comes in — as done in 1993 and the Bush administration did in 2001. The Clinton administration never fired federal prosecutors as pure political retribution.
Alberto Gonzales’s chief of staff Kyle Sampson admits that the Clinton administration never purged its U.S. attorneys in the middle of their terms, explicitly stating, “In recent memory, during the Reagan and Clinton Administrations, Presidents Reagan and Clinton did not seek to remove and replace U.S. Attorneys to serve indefinitely under the holdover provision.”
SaveFarris:
In case you didn’t get the memo.
“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”
Did you not get the memo?
“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”
-No ‘black sites’: Why are you so racist?
Har de har har, it is to laff.
Yes, really. Saddam would have been easily contained. And Osama bin Missin would have been found by now.
Katrina would have been vastly different under Gore. First, having someone competent in charge would have made a difference. Second, not having the National Guard deployed to Iraq with vital equipment would have been of immense help.
Under Bush there are lots more $billions in no-bid contracts coupled with a lack of oversight and accounting. As a matter of fact, government employees holding up payments waiting for proof of service, receipts and overrun explanations have been removed from their posts under Bush.
You apparently don’t understand the Attorney scandal or are deliberately ignorant of it as you demonstrate.
Let’s see, $8 million to the INC vs. lying to the American public followed by a fouled up invasion….
Shorter ed: Did ya get that …….thing……. I sent ya?
So, Farris, are you saying that KBR is the only company that can sell our troops $8 Cokes in the middle of the fucking desert?
Since none of Farris’ fellow neo-conservatives (I use this not derisively, only descriptively, since paleo-conservatives seem to be an endangered species) appear to have been on today, I shall temporarily join his team in the interest of avoiding a ‘victory by virtue of piling on’ sort of argument.
The federalism argument with regard to Katrina could make some sense. The National Response Plan, according to the Wikipedia article, in fact delineates the responders in ascending order from local to federal authorities. This is not to say that the President/FEMA own no blame, but that to place it all at their feet is an oversimplification. It seems possible that Katrina simply overloaded the bureaucratic apparatus designed for disaster response.
Keep in mind that this is written from a position of only casual acquaintance with the event. If anyone has any information contrary to that (leaving aside shrill partisan hackery), I’d much appreciate it. As a liberal my ‘blame Bush’ nerve is as sensitive as anybody’s, though I’d prefer to make sure it’s appropriate first.
Parthenon – I hear what you’re saying about the apparatus, however, I will continue to blame Bush for taking one of the vital agencies of our government, even one that had structural flaws, and putting at its head know-nothing sycophants like Joe Allbaugh and Michael Brown instead of a disaster management expert like James Witt.
…putting at its head know-nothing sycophants like Joe Allbaugh and Michael Brown instead of a disaster management expert like James Witt.
I’m not sure how even the most loyal Bush supporters can argue against the fact of the renaissance of cronyism under his administration. This led to major legislative action in the late nineteenth century after the presidency of Ulysses Grant (whose chief talents seemed to be drinking and hanging out with rich people) and I suspect it will again sometime soon.
In other words, I think you’re probably right; at least that amount of blame is appropriate.
This is not to say that the President/FEMA own no blame, but that to place it all at their feet is an oversimplification.
I agree, and I was not trying to imply that. However, I do honestly believe that, under a President Gore, the federal response would not have taken 5 days or mismanaged the whole thing so badly. FEMA trailers would not have sat in upstate LA for months, I highly doubt they would have been toxic, and I highly doubt that warehouses full of supplies would have sat unused for 3 years.
Again, not trying to step on a hornet’s nest or anything, just speculating what America would be like if we hadn’t all fell into this long national nightmare.
FEMA trailers would not have sat in upstate LA for months, I highly doubt they would have been toxic, and I highly doubt that warehouses full of supplies would have sat unused for 3 years.
I tried to think of a way to play devil’s advocate with this, but… Damn. There’s just no defending it. I got nothin’.
Yeah, it’s pretty bad, huh, Parthenon? How there are still those that would defend such behavior, let alone vote for more, is beyond my comprehension.
They couldn’t coordinate National Guard relief efforts, as state’s that tried to send help couldn’t because of federal red tape. Not to mention, the US taxpayers shelled out billions of dollars so the US government could develop agencies ands procedures in the event of a large scale catastrophe, money that appeared to be wasted.
Not to mention a large percentage of the Louisiana National Guard being deployed in Iraq, especially the combat brigades that would be the front line at the levees. And not to mention their equipment including command and communication equipment, all-terrain vehicles, etc.
I don’t live in Louisiana. The large scale federal response failure is the same that would be replayed where I live though. And is the same incompetence I pay for with my taxes.