Al Gore's Consistency (in his own words)

Due to the fact that I am (temporarily) marooned on the wrong side of the Continental divide, I just grabbed a forlorn copy of The Weekly Standard that was hiding in the waiting room of a locally available, and (hopefully) excellent dentist. It was the issue for the week of August 5th, and there was a wonderful set of quotations that set out, in chronological order, the (in)consistency of the Alster's various stands for and/or against U.S. action for and/or against the Iraqi regime. Clearly he believes that the credulousness of the American electorate is unlimited, or at least he believes that those who would vote for him don't care and will accept any level of consistency or hypocrisy. Unless you are a subscriber to the Standard, links won't get you there, so allow me to outline below the quotes in the piece:


January 30, 1990 on the Senate floor - absolutely against intervention by U.S. forces


September 19, 1991 on Larry King - Stopping the assault short of Baghdad and failing to overthrow So Dumb Insane was a "tragic mistake...we should have bent every policy - and we should do it now - to overthrow that regime and make sure that Saddam Hussein is removed from power"


April 30, 2000 on CNN's Late Edition - He (Gore) and Clinton are working on fixing the problem but exactly what they are doing is "not something we can talk about in the public arena"


July 25, 2002, addressing a group calling itself "21st Century Democrats" at a meeting in the Dirkson Senate Office Building, Gore said:

I certainly question why we would be publicly blustering and announcing an invasion a year or two years in advance.... I do think the situation our country faces now is fundamentally different than what we faced on the eve of the Gulf War. If the rest of the world does not see what it regards as a sufficient provocation to justify an invasion by the United States, then the diplomatic cost would be extremely high

As the editors of The Weekly Standard ended the piece, "That certainly clears things up, doesn't it?


I'd love to go on, but a three day weekend seems to have turned into a two week indenture (pun, most unfortunately, intended) so my time and computer access is severely restricted. This bon mot was too good to pass up, however, so hereinabove I present it to you. Will try to acquire the tools and the time to post as soon as possible, as well as repair my template, but until and unless that happens, I'll do the best I can. Of course you can always munch on my blogroll. at left.

I must sign off now, before I pun again....