YEEEAAAARRRGGGHHHH! Part Deux

Gore calls on Rumsfeld, Rice, and Tenet to resign

By Tatsha Robertson, Globe Staff | May 27, 2004

NEW YORK -- Former vice president Al Gore called for the resignations of top members of President Bush's national security team, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and CIA director George Tenet, in a blistering speech criticizing the administration for its policy in the Iraq war and the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

''We simply cannot afford to further increase the risk to our country with more blunders by this team," Gore said. ''Donald Rumsfeld, as the chief architect of the war plan, should resign today. His deputies Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and his intelligence chief, Stephen Cambone, should also resign. The nation is especially at risk every single day that Rumsfeld remains secretary of defense.

''Condoleezza Rice ought to resign immediately. She has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy," he said. ''This is a disaster for our country."

Gore, who spoke at New York University before 900 members of MoveOn.org, a liberal activist group whose political action committee sponsored the event, referred to Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense; Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, and Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence.

Gore said Bush had promised a foreign policy with humility and a return to ''honor and integrity" to the White House but has brought dishonor to the country and ''built a reputation as the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon." He also said the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were not caused solely by a few US soldiers, as the administration has insisted, but resulted from Bush ignoring the Geneva Conventions.

''How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace!" Gore said, raising his voice in a yell. ''How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison!"

And the reason the fiery gentleman from Tennessee isn't running for President this go-round? Oh yeah, all of his fellow Democrats kept saying he was unelectable. I like the yelling part, though. Reminds me of that wacky alpha male Howard Dean.

In the end, putting aside all the obvious glue-sniffing going on, one is left to wonder about someone whose rhetoric is barely distinguishable from that of our enemies. Constructive criticism is one thing, and is a valuable thing--no one can make a case that decisions made by fallible humans could not have been better thought out or executed. But this attempt at trying to look bold and angry and tough and pugilistic isn't constructive, and isn't compelling to those of us who ask the question, "which man do our enemies fear most will win." I would feel much better if the twisted minds who see every American as an infidel worthy of death would at this moment be miserable with dread, knowing that whoever the hated American devils elect will allow them no rest, and allow them no quarter.

Oh sure, it may just be election-year politicking. But in trying to give hope to your partisans, let's not give equal hope to our enemies.
posted by Terry at 8:03:00 AM