Gore isn’t taking the White House response lying down

January 17, 2006

Al Gore went on the offensive yesterday; the White House responded today. End of story? Not exactly — Gore issued a statement today, offering some fact-checking to the Bush gang’s response. (via News Unfiltered)

“The Administration’s response to my speech illustrates perfectly the need for a special counsel to review the legality of the NSA wiretapping program. The Attorney General is making a political defense of the President without even addressing the substantive legal questions that have so troubled millions of Americans in both political parties.

“There are two problems with the Attorney General’s effort to focus attention on the past instead of the present Administration’s behavior. First, as others have thoroughly documented, his charges are factually wrong. Both before and after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was amended in 1995, the Clinton/Gore Administration complied fully and completely with the terms of the law.

“Second, the Attorney General’s attempt to cite a previous administration’s activity as precedent for theirs — even though factually wrong — ironically demonstrates another reason why we must be so vigilant about their brazen disregard for the law. If unchecked, their behavior would serve as a precedent to encourage future presidents to claim these same powers, which many legal experts in both parties believe are clearly illegal.

“The issue, simply put, is that for more than four years, the executive branch has been wiretapping many thousands of American citizens without warrants in direct contradiction of American law. It is clearly wrong and disrespectful to the American people to allow a close political associate of the president to be in charge of reviewing serious charges against him.

“The country needs a full and independent investigation into the facts and legality of the present Administration’s program.”

Good for Gore. The White House’s mendacity today deserved a formal response.

What is it with the AG defending the administration. The AG is supposed to enforce our laws, no? I think there were many a CB reader and contributor who rightfully noted that this AG really should have been strongly opposed as he would likely choose the administration’s political position over the country’s laws when a conflict showed its head. Guess our Dem Senators who voted for Gonzaless were once again shown to be stooges.

  • Wow this is refreshing, I hope this starts waking people up to how sorry other peoples responses are.

  • Possible White House conversation:

    “Sir, Gore responded. It’s weird. It’s not like one of them to fight back.”

    “Well, we’ll just have to move on to the next phase of our plan, then.”

    “Okay sir, what’s that?”

    “Repeat, repeat, repeat.”

    “Right.”

    “Yep, just keep repeating, saying the same thing, and being redundant. Most people these days will simply believe what they hear the most. People these days accept what is said on quantity, not quality.

    “Okay sir, right away.”

    “Yep, people will believe….”

  • You got it, Bubba. Gonzales is the Attorney General of the United States, not the president. Congress certainly should have more fully exercised it’s duty to advise and consent on the nomination, and now we will see the consequences of that failure.

    All is not lost, however. I have hope that the president will face increasing pressure from both sides of the aisle to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate this scandal. I have less hope that he will actually do so, but if he does not, he will have serious problems after the mid-term elections. The Republicans vulnerable and may lose a significant number of seats in the Senate. With terms like “impeachment” being bandied about like firecrackers on the Fourth of July, Bush will have to fight very hard indeed to avoid his just deserts.

  • If the Democrats had a cohesive message or plan and more of them spoke out about it, they still would not receive any coverage. Media policy is don’t rock the boat because it interferes with profits. Unfortunately, it’s Bush’s boat and he has turned it into the Titanic. I hope Poopert Murdoch and the other mercenary media choke on their profits during this war. Maybe we should start putting signs in our yards, “Impeach Dictator Bush” to see if local media would cover any of it. We need more mass demonstrations (peaceful, that is, I don’t need Bush’s goons kicking my door in) that would make news with some of our elected officials walking in the protests to get attention. Cheney and Rumsfeld went through Vietnam and they saw that once the media turned against that war, it was lost. This is why they have had an iron-fisted grip on what is in the news. Don’t underestimate these criminals.

  • I agree with doubtful. The tactic of the White House will be to repeat, repeat, repeat their lies.

    Lately, I have been compiling quotes from various sources and, although I know that the people on this site are most likely familiar with it, this quote fits perfectly with the White House propaganda machine:

    “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

    Joseph Goebells, Minister of Propaganda

  • Re-elect Gore in ’08!

    I second JoeW’s motion. Clever.

    More of Gore! That ought to be our
    mantra from now on.

  • Gore is hitting stride because he is simply telling his truth with forceful clarity and precision. Gore doesn’t sound like a whore….. ( I meant to say person who sells personal favors for money).
    which makes him boldly stand out from his fellow politicians. .
    Gore in 08

  • “Second, the Attorney General’s attempt to cite a previous administration’s activity as precedent for theirs — even though factually wrong — ironically demonstrates another reason why we must be so vigilant about their brazen disregard for the law. If unchecked, their behavior would serve as a precedent to encourage future presidents to claim these same powers, which many legal experts in both parties believe are clearly illegal.

    Hoisted on their own petard. Well done Al.

  • Gore is the closest to calling GWB, his apparatchiks and their supporters a bunch of liars. It’s got to be headline grabbing and the media simply will not properly synthesize anything less than a clear, explicit indictment against GWB. At this time, they are just not capable of pushing the narrative forward.

    Perhaps it takes an Al Gore to call them liars? He knows what the Clinton Administration did and he already said Gonzalez lied. Maybe he could go that one little step further?

  • Now that Al Gore put his name on all these statements, liberals need to put them out there as much as possible for a little while. One good turn deserves another.

    Anything youve really felt like saying that Al Gore at all touched on in the speech, now’s the time for people to be calling shows, writing letters, writing on their blogs, commenting on blogs, talking to people, etc., and saying, “Al Gore said X, and that’s exactly right, because…”

    Solidarity magnifies us and our efforts.

  • Watching and listening to Al Gore speak I realized the depths of our loss in not having had this focused and intelligent leader as our president. But even that would have been bearable if only he had actually lost the 2000 election to Bush: the greatest liar, cheat and fraud in American history. What was in the Kool-Aid that convinced the American people that this schmuck, this imbecile, this incompetent was fit to be our leader? Here’s a guy with scarcely enough mental octane to cultivate an original idea, a guy with his frat-boy code of ethics that gave him no pause about being AWOL while in the service of his state’s Air National Guard. This very same guy who has reservations about the fairness of Affirmative Action that is designed to rectify egregious discrimination, had no reservations about the affirmative action that promoted some dumb rich-boy asshole from Texas, barely qualified for a community college or technical training center into the hallowed halls of Yale and Harvard. So let’s all sit back and listen to G.W. Bush- someone who has raised mediocrity to an art form, hypocrisy to a philosophy. Indeed let’s all hear Bush pontificate, and while we listen to the sound of his scripted banal drone, meditate on this: In his random deconstruction of the language, which end is he really blowing it out of? How much more damage can we as a nation sustain from this arrogant jerk.

  • Heh, heh.

    Actually, BruceH, you were right the first time: just deserts. You could look it up.

  • To quote Kali, above, “Gore is hitting stride because he is simply telling his truth with forceful clarity and precision.”

    Wouldn’t it be cool if someone could do that *after* they had been nominated for Prez instead of toning down the rhetoric, blurring the message, and beating around the bush to try to capture votes that they’re never going to get anyway.

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