I thought, to provide context given the current enthusiasm for and speculation about former Vice President Al Gore and his potential as a candidate for the 2008 presidential race, that I would post a short compendium of his more notable speeches made during the Bush administration, with information and links on them and choice excerpts.
It is far from comprehensive. I deliberately left out the "We Media" speech and the endorsement of Howard Dean from December 2003, and could not find a good specifically global-warming-themed transcript, either, so feel free to add those and others, if you'd like. Click on the links for full transcripts.The "War On Terrorism" Speech - SEPT. 2002http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2004/gore/gore092302sp.htmlFormer Vice President Al Gore
Iraq and the War on Terrorism
Commonwealth Club of California
San Francisco, California September 23, 2002
Prepared Remarks
Like all Americans I have been wrestling with the question of what our country needs to do to defend itself from the kind of intense, focused and enabled hatred that brought about September 11th, and which at this moment must be presumed to be gathering force for yet another attack...
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Nevertheless, Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power. Moreover, no international law can prevent the United States from taking actions to protect its vital interests, when it is manifestly clear that there is a choice to be made between law and survival. I believe, however, that such a choice is not presented in the case of Iraq. Indeed, should we decide to proceed, that action can be justified within the framework of international law rather than outside it. In fact, though a new UN resolution may be helpful in building international consensus, the existing resolutions from 1991 are sufficient from a legal standpoint.
We also need to look at the relationship between our national goal of regime change in Iraq and our goal of victory in the war against terror. In the case of Iraq, it would be more difficult for the United States to succeed alone, but still possible. By contrast, the war against terror manifestly requires broad and continuous international cooperation. Our ability to secure this kind of cooperation can be severely damaged by unilateral action against Iraq. If the Administration has reason to believe otherwise, it ought to share those reasons with the Congress – since it is asking Congress to endorse action that might well impair a more urgent task: continuing to disrupt and destroy the international terror network.
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The foreshortening of deliberation in the Congress robs the country of the time it needs for careful analysis of what may lie before it. Such consideration is all the more important because of the Administration’s failure thus far to lay out an assessment of how it thinks the course of a war will run – even while it has given free run to persons both within and close to the administration to suggest that this will be an easy conquest. Neither has the Administration said much to clarify its idea of what is to follow regime change or of the degree of engagement it is prepared to accept for the United States in Iraq in the months and years after a regime change has taken place.
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The problem with preemption is that in the first instance it is not needed in order to give the United States the means to act in its own defense against terrorism in general or Iraq in particular. But that is a relatively minor issue compared to the longer-term consequences that can be foreseen for this doctrine. To begin with, the doctrine is presented in open-ended terms, which means that if Iraq if the first point of application, it is not necessarily the last. In fact, the very logic of the concept suggests a string of military engagements against a succession of sovereign states: Syria, Libya, North Korea, Iran, etc., wherever the combination exists of an interest in weapons of mass destruction together with an ongoing role as host to or participant in terrorist operations. It means also that if the Congress approves the Iraq resolution just proposed by the Administration it is simultaneously creating the precedent for preemptive action anywhere, anytime this or any future president so decides.
The "MoveOn.org" Speech - AUG. 2003http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030818/goreAl Gore Moves On
Ibrahim Ahmad, Ari Berman & Sasha F. Chavkin
Breaking nearly a year of silence, Al Gore returned to the public eye yesterday with a forceful speech at New York University, blasting the Bush administration for misleading the American people regarding vital issues of foreign and economic policy. In an event sponsored by MoveOn.org, Gore charged that the Administration had engaged in a "systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a totalistic ideology that is felt to be more important than the mandates of basic honesty."
Going far beyond a September 2002 speech where he warned that unilateral action in Iraq could disrupt the war on terrorism and warranted further debate, Gore offered a stinging condemnation of Bush's leadership on the war.
http://www.moveon.org/gore-speech.htmlFormer Vice President Al Gore
Remarks to MoveOn.org
New York UniversityAugust 7, 2003
AS PREPARED
Some of you may remember that my last formal public address on these topics was delivered in San Francisco, a little less than a year ago, when I argued that the President's case for urgent, unilateral, pre-emptive war in Iraq was less than convincing and needed to be challenged more effectively by the Congress. In light of developments since then, you might assume that my purpose today is to revisit the manner in which we were led into war. To some extent, that will be the case - but only as part of a larger theme that I feel should now be explored on an urgent basis.
The direction in which our nation is being led is deeply troubling to me -- not only in Iraq but also here at home on economic policy, social policy and environmental policy. Millions of Americans now share a feeling that something pretty basic has gone wrong in our country and that some important American values are being placed at risk. And they want to set it right.
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In any case, what we now know to have been false impressions include the following:
(1) Saddam Hussein was partly responsible for the attack against us on September 11th, 2001, so a good way to respond to that attack would be to invade his country and forcibly remove him from power.
MORE
Now, of course, everybody knows that every single one of these impressions was just dead wrong.
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The 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, George Akerlof, went even further last week in Germany when he told Der Spiegel, "This is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history...This is not normal government policy." In describing the impact of the Bush policies on America's future, Akerloff added, "What we have here is a form of looting."
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For eight years, the Clinton-Gore Administration gave this nation honest budget numbers; an economic plan with integrity that rescued the nation from debt and stagnation; honest advocacy for the environment; real compassion for the poor; a strengthening of our military -- as recently proven -- and a foreign policy whose purposes were elevated, candidly presented and courageously pursued, in the face of scorched-earth tactics by the opposition. That is also a form of honor and integrity, and not every administration in recent memory has displayed it.
The "Constitution Hall" Speech - NOV. 2003http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/111103C.shtmlFREEDOM AND SECURITY
Remarks By Al Gore
As Prepared for Delivery
Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. Sunday 09 November 2003
President Bush is claiming the unilateral right to do that to any American citizen he believes is an enemy combatant. Those are the magic words. If the President alone decides that those two words accurately describe someone, then that person can be immediately locked up and held incommunicado for as long as the President wants, with no court having the right to determine whether the facts actually justify his imprisonment.
Now if the President makes a mistake, or is given faulty information by somebody working for him, and locks up the wrong person, then it's almost impossible for that person to prove his innocence because he can�t talk to a lawyer or his family or anyone else and he doesn't even have the right to know what specific crime he is accused of committing. So a constitutional right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness that we used to think of in an old-fashioned way as inalienable can now be instantly stripped from any American by the President with no meaningful review by any other branch of government.
How do we feel about that? Is that OK?
Here's another recent change in our civil liberties: Now, if it wants to, the federal government has the right to monitor every website you go to on the internet, keep a list of everyone you send email to or receive email from and everyone who you call on the telephone or who calls you and they don't even have to show probable cause that you've done anything wrong. Nor do they ever have to report to any court on what they're doing with the information. Moreover, there are precious few safeguards to keep them from reading the content of all your email.
Everybody fine with that?
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The question before us could be of no greater moment: will we continue to live as a people under the rule of law as embodied in our Constitution? Or will we fail future generations, by leaving them a Constitution far diminished from the charter of liberty we have inherited from our forebears? Our choice is clear.
The "Iraq Fiasco" Speech - MAY 2004http://swtpc.blogspot.com/2004/05/al-gore-speech-10262004-in-nyc.htmlAL GORE LINKS ABU GHRAIB PRISON ABUSES TO DEEP FLAWS IN BUSH POLICY
Calls For Resignations Of Bush Team Members Responsible For Iraq Fiasco: Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas J. Feith, Stephen A. Cambone
Remarks by former Vice President Al Gore, May 26, 2004 at
New York University, As Prepared:
Remarks by Al Gore
May 26, 2004
As Prepared
How did we get from September 12th , 2001, when a leading French newspaper ran a giant headline with the words "We Are All Americans Now" and when we had the good will and empathy of all the world -- to the horror that we all felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib.
To begin with, from its earliest days in power, this administration sought to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America since the end of World War II. The long successful strategy of containment was abandoned in favor of the new strategy of "preemption." And what they meant by preemption was not the inherent right of any nation to act preemptively against an imminent threat to its national security, but rather an exotic new approach that asserted a unique and unilateral U.S. right to ignore international law wherever it wished to do so and take military action against any nation, even in circumstances where there was no imminent threat. All that is required, in the view of Bush's team is the mere assertion of a possible, future threat - and the assertion need be made by only one person, the President.
More disturbing still was their frequent use of the word "dominance" to describe their strategic goal, because an American policy of dominance is as repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless, naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance is as dominance does.
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Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even - we must use the word - tortured - to force them to say things that legal procedures might not induce them to say.
These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House. Indeed, the President's own legal counsel advised him specifically on the subject. His secretary of defense and his assistants pushed these cruel departures from historic American standards over the objections of the uniformed military, just as the Judge Advocates General within the Defense Department were so upset and opposed that they took the unprecedented step of seeking help from a private lawyer in this city who specializes in human rights and said to him, "There is a calculated effort to create an atmosphere of legal ambiguity" where the mistreatment of prisoners is concerned."
Address to the Democratic National Convention - JULY 2004http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/26/politics/campaign/26TEXT-GORE.html?ex=1182225600&en=225f811563472666&ei=5070TEXT
Remarks of Former Vice President Al Gore to the
Democratic National Convention, Boston, MAPublished: July 26, 2004
Following is the speech given by Al Gore Monday night at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, as transcribed by The New York Times.
My friends, fellow Democrats, fellow Americans:
I’m going to be candid with you. I had hoped to be back here this week under different circumstances, running for re-election. But you know the old saying: you win some, you lose some. And then there’s that little-known third category.
But I didn’t come here tonight to talk about the past. After all, I don’t want you to think that I lie awake at night counting and recounting sheep. I prefer to focus on the future, because I know from my own experience that America’s a land of opportunity, where every little boy and girl has a chance to grow up and win the popular vote.
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The second lesson from 2000 is this: What happens in a presidential election matters. A lot. The outcome profoundly affects the lives of all 293 million Americans, and people in the rest of the world, too. The choice of who is president affects your life and your family’s future.
The "Judiciary" Speech - APRIL 2005http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,154850,00.html(sorry for the link, but it is just a transcript)Transcript: Gore on the Judiciary
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
A full text of remarks from former Vice President Al Gore on the court system as prepared for delivery on April 27, 2005:
Four years and four months ago, the Supreme Court of the United States, in a bitterly divided 5 to 4 decision, issued an unsigned opinion that the majority cautioned should never be used as a precedent for any subsequent case anywhere in the federal court system. Their ruling conferred the presidency on a candidate who had lost the popular vote, and it inflamed partisan passions that had already been aroused by the long and hard-fought election campaign.
I couldn't have possibly disagreed more strongly with the opinion that I read shortly before midnight that evening, December 12, 2000. But I knew what course of action best served our republic.
Even though many of my supporters said they were unwilling to accept a ruling which they suspected was brazenly partisan in its motivation and simply not entitled to their respect, less than 24 hours later, I went before the American people to reaffirm the bedrock principle that we are a nation of laws, not men. "There is a higher duty than the one we owe to a political party," I said. "This is America and we put country before party."
The demonstrators and counter-demonstrators left the streets and the nation moved on - as it should have - to accept the inauguration of George W. Bush as our 43rd president.
Having gone through that experience, I can tell you - without any doubt whatsoever - that if the justices who formed the majority in Bush v. Gore had not only all been nominated to the court by a Republican president, but had also been confirmed by only Republican senators in party-line votes, America would not have accepted that court's decision.
Moreover, if the confirmation of those justices in the majority had been forced through by running roughshod over 200 years of Senate precedents and engineered by a crass partisan decision on a narrow party line vote to break the Senate's rules of procedure-then no speech imaginable could have calmed the passions aroused in our country.
The "Constitutional Crisis" Speech - JAN. 2006http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/16/AR2006011600779.htmlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/01/16/the-full-text-of-al-gore_n_13930.htmlFORMER VICE PRESIDENT GORE DELIVERS REMARKS ON CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES
JANUARY 16, 2006
Washington, D.C.Co-sponsored by American Constitution Society for Law and Policy and the trans-partisan Liberty Coalition.
SPEAKER: AL GORE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT
The president has also claimed that he has the authority to kidnap individuals on the streets of foreign cities and deliver them for imprisonment and interrogation on our behalf by autocratic regimes and nations that are infamous for the cruelty of their techniques for torture. Some of our traditional allies have been deeply shocked by these new and uncharacteristic patterns on the part of America.
For example, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan -- one of those nations with the worst reputations for torture in its prisons -- registered a complaint to his home office about the cruelty and senselessness of the new U.S. practice that he witnessed. "This material we're getting is useless," he wrote. And then he continued with this: "We are selling our souls for dross. It is, in fact, positively harmful."
Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution?
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This effort to rework America's carefully balanced constitutional design into a lopsided structure dominated by an all-powerful executive branch, with a subservient Congress and subservient judiciary, is ironically accompanied by an effort by the same administration to rework America's foreign policy from one that is based primarily on U.S. moral authority into one that is based on a misguided and self-defeating effort to establish a form of dominance in the world.
And the common denominator...
The common denominator seems to be based on an instinct to intimidate and control.
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Today one of the most distinguished scientific experts in the world on global warming, who works in NASA, has been ordered not to talk to members of the press; ordered to keep a careful log of everyone he meets with so that the executive branch can monitor and control what he shares of his knowledge about global warming. This is a planetary crisis. We owe ourselves a truthful and reasoned discussion.
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