Al Gore Lays It On The Line

01/16/2006

Paul Munnis

Tonight, I made a decision to stay home and to not share my cold with fellow citizens and also not to risk the freezing-drizzle building rapidly on our roads. 

As a result, I wrapped myself around CSPAN and listened to former V.P. Al Gore give a speech on the subject of “Executive Powers.”

This was the most powerful speech I have ever heard and it was worth every moment of my time. I will haunt the website of CSPAN to find a video rebroadcast and then put a link into for all of our members to watch and enjoy. The link they have up right now is broken and needs to be fixed. Here is a link to the text transcript.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/16/AR2006011600779.html

Here is the link to the CSPAN site and it requires the latest version of RealPlayer (free) to view it as streaming video
http://www.c-span.org/

Then go half-way down the page looking under Audio/Video for the link to “Fmr Vice Pres, Gore Speech on Executive Powers.” Then it will load and start streaming to you.

Al Gore is a renowned and accomplished Constitutional scholar and historian. He examined the three levels of government, their Constitutional powers, the Constitutional Checks and Balances designed to assure the prevention of abuse of power and then he took the present Congress, the Bush Administration, and the Supreme Court to task for their failures which he detailed in no uncertain terms. He discussed the Abrahamoff Scandal, he looked at graft and corruption in the Bush Administration, he described the usurping of powers by the Bush Administration and he put the act of spying on American citizens into context even as he made it clear that Bush has intentionally violated the intentions of Congress and then he showed why there is no legal basis for Mr. Bush’s actions.

The speech was robust, powerful, and patriotic. He has made history with this speech and he has challenged “We The People,” to rein in the runaway Bush team. This speech will be referred to by historians for generations to come as a major speech on the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I learned about this speech from Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s “Hardball.” Chris is an avid neo-con supporter and he has spent much of his career in advocacy for the GOP and over the last five years for the Bush Administration. He drives hard and has all the personality of a snapping turtle in heat. He hit his guests hard tonight with gut punches as usual and they dealt with it and then quietly revealed the criminal and immoral behavior of the Bush Administration even while braving the verbal attacks.

When I tuned in he was interviewing a young man recently back from Iraq, an interrogator of prisoners at Abu Gharib prison and elsewhere in Iraq, and the young man told of the horrors and atrocities that they committed under government supervision and by military directive over his 24 month assignment. As the answers came back to tough questions like: “What did it feel like to do that to fellow human beings?” The young man told him. When Matthews asked: “Was it effective – did you get the intel?” He was astounded when the young man said that the only time they obtained good intel was when they treated the prisoners with respect and a guarantee of annominity and then they were rewarded with the sought after intel. Torture did not produce any quality intelligence in his experience but it did produce lots of false leads which frustrated troops and lead to even more atrocity. He also spoke of heretofore unknow atrocities comitted by our American troops at the time of capture. He spoke of 100 dead POW’s who died while being tortured. He said 90% of the people they torured were not guilty of anything. They were caught in neighborhood round-ups and were presumed guilty or it was assummed that they knew something. The military sent them back several times for more interrogation.

Here is a link to this interview - Tactics of Interrogation:
http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?g=a453ef7d-cbe8-4a88-a02e-94b224e8359a&f=copy

Then Matthews went on and interviewed Ken Bass a former member of Congress who wrote the laws that Bush claims give him the power to spy on Americans and to disobey the law. Mr. Bass told of instance after instance in which the Senate made it clear to Bush that although he had requested such powers that they were not being granted to him. Bass was on the Senate Intelligence Committee and he knew precisely what powers the NSA were granted and denied becasue he wrote the laws.

A link to this is entitled: “Secret Justice.” and is below:
http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?g=c4af955f-7ebb-4375-8a28-4e4a744a2a01&f=copy

By the time this interview ended, Mr. Bush looked pretty darn defenseless. It dawned on me that the Congress is an equal branch of government being held closely by Bush cronies that are now being gutted from positions of power and thus losing control and as a result of their ousting caused by the Abrahamoff scandal. This is opening up avenues of dealing with Bush that he did not anticipate.

Next, Matthews interviewed people about the Abrahamoff Scandal. As the litany of graft and corruption rolled out it was attributed to a few in key power positions. Both the GOP and Democrats on his show were in total agreement that it’s not pervasive across Congress and that it’s wrong to tar everyone in Congress with the same brush.

The video link to this is below and is called: “Sweeping Scandal.”
http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?g=00fb1c8a-2584-469b-859c-48caaf5279b4&f=copy

Then I went over to CSPAN and I caught the Al Gore speech and it was a preview of the indictments that the Bush Administration will have to face. Gore made it clear that if Congress doesn’t clean up its act then the voters will help.

It was enough to make this Democrat happy that we have faced the intimidation of the Bush Administration and persisted in showing the wrongs of the five years of GOP governance and that there is a shot now at justice denied.

I came away optimistic that America will right these wrongs and that the truth will have out. Men and women of conscience will face reality in the voting booth. History is on our side in this matter.

I was darn glad that I stayed home to witness all of this. It was a historic night for me.