It the article linked above, Al Gore dissects President Bush's ideology. He says Bush is not stupid, not blinded by religious faith, but following, inflexibly, a "right-wing Republican ideology that exalts the interests of the wealthy and of large corporations over the interests of the American people. Love of power for its own sake is the original sin of this presidency."
excerpts:
We know from the 9/11 commission that within hours of the attack, Secretary Rumsfeld was attempting to find a way to link Saddam Hussein with 9/11. We know the sworn testimony of the President's White House head of counter-terrorism Richard Clarke that on September 12 th - the day after the attack: 'The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this…I said, 'Mr. President…There's no connection. He came back at me and said, 'Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection…We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts…They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.' …I don't think he sees memos that he doesn't-- wouldn't like the answer.'
He did not ask about Osama bin Laden. He did not ask about al Qaeda. He did not ask about Saudi Arabia or any country other than Iraq. When Clarke responded to his question by saying that Iraq was not responsible for the attack and that al Qaeda was, the President persisted in focusing on Iraq, and again, asked Clarke to spend his time looking for information linking Saddam Hussein to the attack."
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This is not negligence, this is deception.
It is clear that President Bush has absolute faith in a rigid, right-wing ideology. He ignores the warnings of his experts. He forbids any dissent and never tests his assumptions against the best available evidence. He is arrogantly out of touch with reality. He refuses to ever admit mistakes. Which means that as long as he is our President, we are doomed to repeat them. It is beyond incompetence. It is recklessness that risks the safety and security of the American people.
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He claimed that he was going to war to deal with an imminent threat to the United States. The evidence shows clearly that there was no such imminent threat and that Bush knew that at the time he stated otherwise. He claimed that gaining dominance of Iraqi oil fields for American producers was never part of his calculation. But we now know, from a document uncovered by the New Yorker and dated just two weeks to the day after Bush's inauguration, that his National Security Counsel was ordered to "meld" its review of "operational policies toward rogue states" with the secretive Cheney Energy Task Force's "actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields."
We also know from documents obtained in discovery proceedings against that Cheney Task Force by the odd combination of Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club that one of the documents receiving scrutiny by the task force during the same time period was a detailed map of Iraq showing none of the cities or places where people live but showing in great detail the location of every single oil deposit known to exist in the country, with dotted lines demarking blocks for promising exploration - a map which, in the words of a Canadian newspaper, resembled a butcher's drawing of a steer, with the prime cuts delineated.
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Iraq is not the only policy where the President has made bold assertions about the need for a dramatic change in American policy, a change that he has said is mandated by controversial assertions that differ radically from accepted views of reality in that particular policy area. And as with Iraq, there are other cases where subsequently available information shows that the President actually had analyses that he was given from reputable sources that were directly contrary what he told the American people. And, in virtually every case, the President, it is now evident, rejected the information that later turned out to be accurate and instead chose to rely upon, and to forcefully present to the American people, information that subsequently turned out to be false. And in every case, the flawed analysis was provided to him from sources that had a direct interest, financial or otherwise, in the radically new policy that the President adopted. And, in those cases where the policy has been implemented, the consequences have been to detriment of the American people, often catastrophically so.
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There is now only one center of power left in our constitution capable of at long last holding George W. Bush accountable, and it is the voters.
There are fifteen days left before our country makes this fateful choice - for us and the whole world. Join me on November 2 nd in taking our country back.
Former Vice-President Al Gore
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