Who's the Maddest of Them All?

Former Vice President Al Gore delivered a speech today attacking President Bush on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. If you're interested in what he had to say, you'd probably rather listen to it than read it, as the printed version on the web site of Moveon.org, which sponsored his appearance, runs to an astounding 6,589 words.

In reading over the speech, it's difficult to pick out some choice parts for quoting here, not because there aren't any, but because the entire harangue is so incoherent, slipshod, ahistorical, and conspiracy-laden. Still, here are a few representative remarks from the man who almost became our president.

"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 [in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq] 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 . . . ."

And:

"But instead of making it [America's security] better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any person, institution or nation who disagrees with him.

"He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of it done in our name."

Or:

"It is now clear that their obscene abuses of the truth and their unforgivable abuse of the trust placed in them after 9/11 by the American people led directly to the abuses of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison . . . .

"The same dark spirit of domination has led them to - for the first time in American history - imprison American citizens with no charges, no right to see a lawyer, no right to notify their family, no right to know of what they are accused, and no right to gain access to any court to present an appeal of any sort. The Bush Admistration [sic] has even acquired the power to compel librarians to tell them what any American is reading, and to compel them to keep silent about the request - or else the librarians themselves can also be imprisoned."

Move over, Howard Dean. Al's claimed the mantel of maddest Democrat.