The latest example is an August 7 speech by former U.S. vice president Albert Gore at New York University before an audience of 500. The Democratic Party politician criticized “the manner in which the White House went about the invasion of Iraq.” Attacking “the false impressions” that made up Bush’s justification for the invasion, Gore said, “It is obvious to most Americans that we have had one too many wars in the Persian Gulf.”

In the presentation sponsored by the College Democrats and Moveon.org, a liberal lobby group, Gore said that “too many of our soldiers are paying the highest price, for the strategic miscalculations, serious misjudgment, and historic mistakes that have put them and our nation in harm’s way.” He listed six “false impressions” that the Bush administration had used to justify the war on Iraq. These include linking former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon or the claim that Hussein “was on the verge of building nuclear bombs and giving them to the terrorists.”

Gore said that the Bush administration used “an effective propaganda machine” to win support for the invasion in “a systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a totalistic ideology” in favor of “narrow special interests.” Gore counterposed to the current president the administration of William Clinton for its “honor and integrity” and success in “strengthening the military.” Gore added, “I’ve just about concluded that the real problem may be the President himself and that next year we ought to fire him and get a new one.” A Democrat in the White House is needed to protect “American values,” he said.

Whitewashing the history of U.S. imperialism from Vietnam to Panama—and the fact that most major wars have been carried out by Democratic administrations—Gore criticized Bush for carrying out “the first pre-emptive war in U.S. history.” During the eight years of the Clinton/Gore White House, Washington maintained the “no-fly” zone over two-thirds of Iraqi territory, carried out regular aerial bombardment of that country, and pressed to keep in force United Nations sanctions that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis from malnutrition and disease. That government also carried out the U.S. war on Yugoslavia, bombardments of Afghanistan, and an aborted invasion of Somalia. Gore added that the same “hidden social objectives” that drive Bush’s foreign policy are also behind “the threat posed to America’s economy by his tax and budget proposals.”

The 2000 Democratic presidential hopeful spoke just 10 days after his former running mate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, had taken to task several of his opponents in the race for the Democratic nomination in the 2004 presidential election for their criticisms of Bush over Iraq. Lieberman emphasized his support for the assault on Iraq in a July 28 press conference, and charged that by their criticism of the White House several of his rivals “are sending out a message that they don’t know a just war when they see it.”

The Washington Post, one of the country’s most prominent liberal dailies, criticized “Mr. Gore’s Blurred View” in an August 10 editorial. Weighing in on the debate on how the Democrats can best challenge Bush in the 2004 campaign, the Post editors said, “Mr. Gore, who not so long ago was describing Iraq as a ‘virulent threat in a class by itself,’ validated just about every conspiracy theory of the antiwar left.” They chided Gore for promoting the notion that Bush “has put one over on the nation, and not just with regard to Iraq” with his warnings that the president’s economic and environmental policies serve only “powerful and wealthy groups and individuals who manage to work their way into the inner circle.”

In response to Gore’s attack on the Patriot Act as “a broad and extreme invasion of our privacy rights in the name of terrorism prevention,” the Post’s editors ask “how to explain that 98 senators—including all four Democratic senators now running for president—voted for it?” They warn that if the Democrats adopt Gore’s theme “they will all go off the cliff” and that “he isn’t the only Democrat who thinks he can have it both ways, pandering to anti-Bush passion while protecting his national-security flank. Sen. John Kerry has been trying something similar with, for example, this applause line… ‘We shouldn’t be opening firehouses in Baghdad while closing them in Brooklyn.’”

The Post favored Lieberman’s stance of finding “plenty to criticize in the Bush administration foreign policy without abandoning his longstanding support for American strength and democracy promotion.”

On the other hand, four of the nine contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination—former Vermont governor Howard Dean, and Senator John Kerry, John Edwards, and Robert Graham—issued statements praising Gore’s speech.  
 
 
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