Iraq War: Al Gore on the war

Al Gore's recent interview in Rolling Stone had quite a bit to say about the Iraq War:  Al Gore 3.0 by Will Dana Rolling Stone 07/13-27/06.  Gore tells Dana:

Right now we are borrowing huge amounts of money from China to buy huge amounts of oil from the most unstable region of the world, and to bring it here and burn it in ways that destroy the habitability of the planet.  That is nuts!  We have to change every aspect of that. ...

But Bush is insulated - his staff smiles a lot and only gives him the news that he wants to hear. Unfortunately, they still have this delusion that they create their own reality.  As George Orwell wrote, we human beings are capable of convincing ourselves of something that's not true long after the accumulated evidence would convince any reasonable person that it's wrong.  And when leaders persist in that error, sooner or later they have a collision with reality, often on a battlefield.  That, in essence, is exactly what happened in Iraq. ...

Bush's whole pose as a compassionate conservative was fraudulent.  His budget was fraudulent.  Even the idea that he would be staunchly opposed to nation building was fraudulent.  I don't mean that he actually knew at the time of the campaign that he was going to invade Iraq - because I don't think Cheney had told him yet [laughs].  ...

[Q:] Let's look at Iraq right now. Is there some way we can pull out?

[A:] We're going to have to pull out of there.  But the hard truth is that even those of us who tried like hell to prevent this catastrophic mistake are now bound to share in the moral consequences of whatever choices we as a nation make in the manner of our leaving.  We have to pursue two objectives simultaneously, and that's always hard.  The first objective is to get the hell out of there as quickly as we can.  The second objective is to avoid the moral mistake of doing even more harm to those people in the manner of our leaving than we did in the manner of our invasion.  And, tragically, it is possible to do even more harm if we are not alert to the ethical choices that we have to make as we prepare to leave.  Unfortunately there are no "good options," because Bush and Cheney have driven us into an ethical cul-de-sac.  General Odom, who used to run defense intelligence, said last year that the invasion of Iraq "will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history."  ...

Look at the looming conflict with Iran over its nuclear program and the bizarre statements by its president.  We have in effect given him 135,000 hostages on his doorstep.  And the government that has just emerged in Baghdad is on much more friendly terms with Tehran than Washington is.

We're all, in some ways, lashed to the mast of our ship of state here.  Because the little group at the helm should resign.  You know, Rumsfeld and that whole gang have made horrible mistake after horrible mistake, and yet Bush continues to keep them in charge.  How do the rest of us play a responsible role in advising the group in the White House that doesn't want to hear what any of us say in any case?

If you had written this in a novel before it all played out, you'd get the proverbial rejection slip - nobody would believe it.  That any group of leaders could be this incompetent, and catastrophically blind to reality.  But here's my point: What they've done with Iraq, what they did with Katrina, is exactly the approach they're taking to global warming.  They're ignoring reality, they're twisting and cherry-picking the evidence to create false impressions that serve the interests of a small, powerful group that has a financial interest in the outcome. ... (my emphasis in bold)

It makes you realize once again how much the Scalia Five of the Supreme Court and our pitifully dysfunctional "press corps" with its War on Gore cost the United States.

I sure hope he runs for re-election as President in 2008.