To invade Iraq. This speech is from February 2002. The "crisis" over whether Iraq and the weapons inspectors began in the summer of 2002. The first time Bush announced that he had the power to wage preemptive war was on September 12, 2002. The vote on whether to invade Iraq took place in early October 2002. And, of course, the invasion itself did not begin until March 20, 2003.
The main point of the speech you quoted is not about "how do we take out Hussein" - - he speaks about Hussein in the one passage you quoted. The main point of the speech is about how military force is not the answer to ending terrorist attacks against the U.S.:
http://www.algore.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=79&Itemid=84(snip)
For there is another Axis of Evil in the world: poverty and ignorance; disease and environmental disorder; corruption and political oppression. We may well put down terror in its present manifestations. But if we do not attend to the larger fundamentals as well, then the ground is fertile and has been seeded for the next generation of those born to hate us, who will hold these things up before the world's poor and dispossessed, and say that all these things are in our image, and rekindle the war we are now hoping to snuff out.
"Draining the swamp" of terrorism must of course in the first instance mean destroying the ability of terrorist networks to function. But drying it up at its source must also mean draining the aquifer of anger that underlies terrorism: anger that inflames the hearts of so many young men, and makes them willing, dedicated recruits for terror. Anger at perceived historical injustices involving a mass-memory throughout the Islamic world of past glory and more recent centuries of decline and oppression at the hands of the West.
Anger at the cynicism of Western policy during the Cold War: often aligning itself with corrupt and tyrannical governments. And even after all that, anger at the continued failure to thrive, as rates of economic growth stagnate, while the cohort of unemployed young men under twenty continues to increase.
This is anger different than the pure evil represented by terrorists, but anger nonetheless -- anger which is the medium on which the impulse to terrorism thrives. The evil we now confront is not just the one-time creation of a charismatic leader and his co-conspirators, or even of a handful of regimes. What we deal with now is today's manifestation of an anger welling up from deep layers of grievance shared by many millions of people.
Military force alone cannot deal with this. Public diplomacy alone cannot drain this reservoir. What will be needed is a far reaching American strategy for encouraging reform, and for engaging day in and day out with societies that are trying to cast off the curse of bitter experience relived continuously. Hope for the future is the only way to put out these fires.
(more... )If you want to know what Gore thought about the invasion of Iraq at the beginning of the war, you have to look at events later in 2002. The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 was introduced in Congress on October 2, 2002. It passed the House on October 10, 2002 and and the Senate on October 11, 2002. On September 23, 2002 - - during the time that an invasion of Iraq was being debated but before a bill authorizing that invasion was even introduced in the House - - Gore gave a speech titled "Iraq and the War on Terrorism". The whole point of the speech is to oppose the idea of preemptive invasions in general and specifically to oppose the invasion:
http://www.algore.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=48&Itemid=84A couple weeks after the vote to authorize the invasion, but well before the actual invasion, a reporter asked Gore how he would have voted, if he were still in Congress:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030217082353/www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/11/21/MN58265.DTLGore bashes Bush's record
Possible prelude to candidacy
by Marc Sandalow, Washington Bureau Chief
(snip)
For the first time, Gore -- who was one of the few Democratic senators to vote in support of the Gulf War in 1991 -- said he would have voted against authorizing the White House to use force against Saddam Hussein had he been a member of Congress last month. Keep in mind that while Gore was speaking out against the proposed invasion, Gore was the front runner for the 2004 Dem nomination, he was as far ahead of his closest rival as HRC is ahead of hers today. And also remember that the proposed invasion was hugely popular at this time.
Because I know somebody is still going to post some variation on: "But Gore said Hussein was a menace! That means he had to support the war!", I am posting a few excerpts from the Amnesty International 2002 report on Iraq - - which, like Gore's February speech, was made before the idea of invading Iraq was proposed:
http://web.amnesty.org/report2002/mde/iraq!OpenScores of people, including possible prisoners of conscience and armed forces officers suspected of planning to overthrow the government, were executed. Scores of suspected anti-government opponents, including people suspected of having contacts with opposition groups in exile, were arrested. The fate and whereabouts of most of those arrested, including those detained in previous years, remained unknown. Several people were given lengthy prison terms after grossly unfair trials before special courts. Torture and ill-treatment of political prisoners and detainees were systematic. The two Kurdish political parties controlling Iraqi Kurdistan detained prisoners of conscience, and armed political groups were reportedly responsible for abductions and killings.
(snip)
In April (2001) the UN Commission on Human Rights adopted a resolution strongly condemning ''the systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law by the Government of Iraq, resulting in an all-pervasive repression and oppression sustained by broad-based discrimination and widespread terror.'' The Commission extended for a further year the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on Iraq.
(snip)
The death penalty continued to be applied extensively. In November the Revolutionary Command Council, the highest executive body in the country, issued a decree to provide the death penalty for the offences of prostitution, homosexuality, incest and rape. The decree also stated that those convicted of providing accommodation for the purposes of prostitution would be executed by the sword. Women and men were reportedly beheaded in the last two years for alleged prostitution and procuring prostitutes, usually without formal trial and sometimes for political reasons.
(snip)
Political prisoners and detainees were subjected to systematic torture. The bodies of many of those executed had evident signs of torture. Common methods of physical torture included electric shocks or cigarette burns to various parts of the body, pulling out of fingernails, rape, long periods of suspension by the limbs from either a rotating fan in the ceiling or from a horizontal pole, beating with cables, hosepipe or metal rods, and falaqa (beating on the soles of the feet). In addition, detainees were threatened with rape and subjected to mock execution. They were placed in cells where they could hear the screams of others being tortured and were deliberately deprived of sleep.
(more... )Hussein was a brutal dictator. Gore opposed him and thought Iraq would be better off with a government that didn't torture and kill it's own citizens. But again, that is not the same thing as supporting Bush's invasion of Iraq. Gore never supported that idea, as I have shown.
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