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WASHINGTON -- Jokes about "stiff" Al Gore are gone, replaced by recount jokes. The cautious campaigner of 2000 is gone, too, replaced by a fire-breathing Bush basher. When Gore delivered his latest-in-a-series slam at the Republicans last week, faulting Vice President Dick Cheney for "sleazy and despicable" criticism of the Democrats, a White House spokesman dismissively responded: "Consider the source." Consider Al Gore. Well, he used to be the vice president. And, as he likes to say, he used to be the next president of the United States. Now, he is Al Gore, private citizen. Al Gore unleashed.[snip]Republicans say Gore's...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Retired Gen. Wesley Clark criticized President George W. Bush's foreign affairs leadership as "catastrophic" on Friday at a John Kerry campaign event. Clark said Bush should have sent diplomats into Iraq to talk to Saddam Hussein before sending in troops. The former presidential candidate, who lives in Little Rock, also said Bush is compounding the problem by not negotiating with Iran or Syria.

Today on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, one of Senator Kerry’s top advisors, former Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, declared that the situation in Iraq is worse than America’s defeat in Vietnam. Here is the excerpt from that interview: WALLACE: ...I want to give you, as one of his top advisers, a chance to clear that up. We're going to first play a series of statements by the senator and also one by one of his opponents in the Democratic primaries. Take a look. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS) U.S. SENATOR JOHN KERRY, D-MA: I think it was the right decision to disarm...

Albright Calls For 'Real Leadership' In Mideast Former Secretary Of State Speaks About President Bush's Mideast Policy Sep 10, 2004 9:23 pm US/Eastern WASHINGTON (AP) Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, declaring herself a partisan Democrat, called Friday for "real leadership again" in the Middle East. Albright, who served under President Clinton, said the United States, Israel and the Palestinians all must try harder to work out a settlement in the area. "The Middle East is not an occasional trip, an occasional speech," she said at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a private research group. Implicitly criticizing the...

Bush announces major troop realignment [snip] Democrats criticized the move. In a statement released by the Democratic National Committee, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a former presidential candidate and former NATO supreme commander, said the redeployment from Europe and Asia would "significantly undermine U.S. national security." "This ill-conceived move and its timing seem politically motivated rather than designed to strengthen our national security," Clark said.[snip]

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Former Vice President Al Gore charged Thursday that President Bush's nomination of Republican Rep. Porter Goss to lead the CIA continues the president's pattern of using the Sept. 11 tragedy for political benefit. Gore, in a speech to the Music Row Democrats, said that with the selection of Goss, an eight-term congressman from Florida, Bush "just thumbed his nose" at the bipartisan commission established to investigate the attacks. Gore said the commission recommended a change in the structure of intelligence-gathering and the creation of a new position to coordinate intelligence. Gore called a Goss, chairman of the...

COLUMBUS(OH) -- North Carolina Sen. John Edwards Sunday night called for the firing of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. But Edwards said if Americans really want to show the world their disgust over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, they should dump President George W. Bush in the November election.

Members of Maine's congressional delegation offered a mix of reactions to President Bush's press conference Tuesday night, with Democratic Rep. Tom Allen critical and the state's two Republican senators generally supportive. "This president is incapable of admitting a mistake," Allen, who represents Maine's 1st Congressional District, said in an interview after the press conference. "He simply avoids the question when it's asked. And therefore it's hard to have confidence that he has learned anything from this experience." Allen also said the president "has a shallow understanding of the enemy, which is violent anti-Western Islamic fundamentalism - not an exploding bomb,...

NEW YORK -- How the many intelligent people in U.S. President George Bush's administration can continue to make so many enormous blunders both astounds and dismays. Two examples: Australia is facing a tight electoral race between Conservative Prime Minister John Howard, who eagerly sent troops to Iraq, and Labour party challenger Mark Latham, who, like Spain's new PM, vows to bring his nation's troops home from Iraq. A majority of Australians opposes the Iraq war. U.S. Ambassador Tom Schieffer, a Texas pal of Bush, warned Australians of "serious consequences" if they elect Latham. Australians love America, but any worldly person...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean said Tuesday that President Bush's decision to send troops to Iraq appears to have contributed to the bombing deaths of 201 in Spain. A growing international investigation is focusing on Islamic militants possibly linked to al-Qaida as the culprits in the Madrid train bombings last Thursday. European intelligence agencies are trying to identify a purported al-Qaida operative who claimed in a videotape that the group carried out the bombings to punish Spain for backing of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. The tape was discovered in a trash bin near Madrid's...

Gore Says Bush Abused Trust, Played Politics of Fear Fri February 6, 2004 12:26 AM ET By Larry Fine NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former Vice President Al Gore on Thursday accused President Bush of abusing the trust of Americans by playing on their fears as he led the United States to war against Iraq. Gore, who lost the contested 2000 presidential election to Bush, said that like most Americans he rallied behind Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks, trusting his claims of ties between Iraq and al Qaeda extremists blamed for the attacks and taking his word that Iraq had...

NEW YORK (AP) Former Vice President Al Gore on Thursday blasted President Bush as a "moral coward," saying he abandoned the public's environmental interests to accommodate his financial contributors. Gore, in a speech before a full house at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan, said it sometimes appeared that "the Bush-Cheney administration is wholly owned by the coal, oil, utility and mining industries." It was the latest in a series of harsh critiques from Gore on the Bush administration. The ex-Democratic presidential candidate, who lost the 2000 election to Bush, had previously accused the administration of cracking down on civil liberties...

'It's just wrong what we're doing' In an exclusive interview, repentant Vietnam War architect Robert McNamara breaks his silence on Iraq: The United States, he says, is making the same mistakes all over again By DOUG SAUNDERS UPDATED AT 10:27 AM EST Saturday, Jan. 24, 2004 Advertisement 'Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why." With those words, written nine years ago, Robert McNamara began an extraordinary final phase of his career -- devoted to chronicling the errors, delusions and false assumptions that turned him into the chief architect and most prominent promoter...

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, speaking in New York, branded President Bush "a moral coward" for tailoring environmental policies to campaign allies. In a stinging assessment of the president's environmental record that became a much broader critique, Gore charged the Bush administration was "wholly owned by the coal, oil, utility and mining industries." Gore criticized Bush for reneging on his 2000 campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas blamed by many scientists for Earth's rising temperature. He also complained Bush has "routinely" drafted new regulations that favor industry. "While President Bush likes to project an image of...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore scoffed at President Bush's plan to send astronauts to the moon and Mars and said Bush was a "moral coward" for ignoring global environmental threats. Speaking at an event sponsored by political advocacy groups MoveOn.org and Environment2004, Gore said Bush's record on the environment routinely puts the wishes of the coal, oil, utility and mining industries ahead of public interests. "Instead of spending enormous sums of money on an unimaginative and retread effort to make a tiny portion of the moon habitable for a handful of people, we should focus...

Former Vice President Al Gore on Thursday blasted President Bush as a "moral coward," saying he abandoned the public interest to accommodate his financial contributors. Gore, in a speech before a full house at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan, said it sometimes appeared that "the Bush-Cheney administration is wholly owned by the coal, oil, utility and mining industries." It was the latest in a series of harsh critiques from Gore on the Bush administration. The ex-Democratic presidential candidate, who lost the 2000 election to Bush, had previously accused the administration of cracking down on civil liberties since the Sept. 11...

Mark your calendar! This Thursday, January 15th, former Vice President Al Gore will deliver a major address attacking the Bush administration's environmental record and its policies on global warming. The event will be broadcast live at www.MoveOn.org. The speech, co-sponsored by Environment2004 Education Fund and MoveOn.org, is free but attendance will be limited to members of Environment2004 and MoveOn.org! This is the third in a series of recent speeches by the former Vice President. WHAT:  Major policy address by Al GoreWHEN:  Thursday, January 15, 2004 at Noon(Introductions at 12:00; speech at 12:15pm)WHERE: Beacon Theatre, 2124 Broadway, between 74th and 75th...

In the structure of a classical play, a problem is presented in Act 1. Complications arise in Act 2, and all is resolved in Act 3. In Iraq this spring, while much of Europe was still enmeshed in Act 2, George W. Bush plunged directly into Act 3, without acknowledging the complications or fully considering the consequences of his actions. The result was the most heated year in trans-Atlantic relations since the Suez crisis of 1956. The Iraq war ignited tinder already piled high by clashes over trade, arms control, the Middle East, global warming and the International Criminal Court....

It was a good day for democracy – Saddam Hussein caught at last. Just weeks ago, though, democracy had a bad day, when a freelance "peace" agreement was unveiled in Switzerland by an unelected Israeli citizen – an instance of anti-democracy abetted by arch anti-democrat, Jimmy Carter. I doubt that anyone would characterize Carter as a mass murderer, though as president he ushered in the era of Islamic fanaticism responsible for more murders than one would care to count. But Hussein and Carter both have a history of treating democracy with contempt – one through violence, the other through a...

Leaders of various Kashmiri groups in Pakistan have been told by President Pervez Musharraf that former US president Bill Clinton has been unofficially mediating between India and Pakistan to help them to resolve the dispute through early talks next year. An informed source told the Dawn newspaper that Musharraf had told the Kashmiri leaders that Clinton was in "regular contact" with him (Musharraf) and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on the issue, and was keeping the Bush Administration abreast of the situation. He further went on to say that Musharraf had confirmed that he had made a telephone call...