"Gore Sez Rummy, Condi, Other Bushies Should Get Canned"

Associated Press

Former Vice President Al Gore called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, CIA director George Tenet, and national security adviser Condoleeza Rice on Wednesday in a fiery denunciation of Bush administration policies.

In a speech at New York University, Gore argued that officials, including several of Rumsfeld’s top civilian deputies, should step down because the situation in Iraq is out of control.

“I am calling today for Republicans as well as Democrats to join me in asking for the immediate resignations of those immediately below George Bush and Dick Cheney, who are most responsible for creating the catastrophe we are facing in Iraq,” Gore said, drawing strong applause from the partisan crowd.“Donald Rumsfeld ought to resign immediately,” Gore bellowed. “Our nation is at risk every single day Rumsfeld remains as Secretary of Defense. We need someone with good judgment and commonsense.”

Rice “ought to resign immediately. She has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy. This is a disaster for our country,” he said.

The former vice president and Democratic presidential candidate was gentler on Tenet, describing him as a personal friend and “honorable man” who should still leave his position for intelligence failures.

Gore argued that the evolving scandal of abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not the product of individual misdeeds, but systemic disregard for the Geneva Conventions.

“What happened at that prison, it is now clear, is not the result of random acts of a few bad apples. It was the natural consequence of the Bush administration policy,” he said.

Gore charged that reservists photographed abusing prisoners “were clearly forced to wade into a moral cesspool designed by the Bush White House,” which, he said, had abandoned adherence to the Geneva Conventions.
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Raising his voice to a yell, he drew early applause by angrily denouncing the administration.

“How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace! How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein’s torture prison!”

Gore charged the problems in Iraq have engendered fierce anti-American sentiment around the world, and provided a strong recruiting tool for terror groups.

President Bush “has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every town and city to a greater danger of attacks by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornets nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us,” Gore said.

In a speech that began with a philosophical discussion of good versus evil in the human soul, Gore disputed Bush’s claim that Iraq is the main front in the war on terrorism.

“It’s not the central front in the war on terror but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists.”

The speech was one of several Gore appearances sponsored since August by MoveOn.org; the liberal interest group also has a television and radio ad calling for President Bush to fire Rumsfeld. In January, Gore attacked the Bush administration’s environmental policies.

Gore, who served in Vietnam, predicted greater problems for America’s involvement in Iraq.

“The worst still lies ahead,” he said.