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Al Gore
Former U.S. Vice President
Answers to Written Questions from the Floor:
Q: With the current Republican chorus all singing the same pro-war tune, why hasn't the Democratic Party seized the opportunity to lead our nation to a more peaceful national agenda?
A: I think that there is a realistic view on the part of both political parties that Saddam Hussein does represent a threat to the peace and stability of the Persian Gulf region and the Middle East and that, given time, he could come to pose an imminent threat to us. And so there is no illusion about the fact that he is, I will say, an evil man. I first spoke against the regime of Saddam Hussein in the fall of 1988, soon after he used poison gas against a minority within his own people. My father's older brother had been the victim of poison gas in WWI. Because of that fact our family's oral histories had always put a special emphasis on the horror of those weapons. And you know that generation impressed that same lesson on peoples around the world. We went through all of WWII without poison gas being used, save some horrible experiments in the Far East, but not used by combatants.
When Saddam became the first to break that taboo, it really set off alarm bells, and of course what he's done since then has continued to reveal his true character. So there's just kind of a general agreement that he needs to go. But as I'm saying here today, the way we accomplish that objective can have a profound effect on whether or not we can accomplish other objectives that are important to us. Now, the debate isn't over with in the Congress, and I think that you will likely see a debate that eventually approaches the quality of debate that took place in advance of the 1991 resolution.
Q: Do you believe that some of the warmongering by the Bush Administration is being used as a divisionary tactic for the November elections in an attempt to regain Republican control of the House?
A: I have purposely avoiding making that charge. What I've said here today is the fact that those doubts have been rising up here at home and in other countries is simply a fact that has to be taken into consideration. I said some time ago that President Bush, in my opinion, was using the war against terrorism in ways that were calculated to have a political effect beneficial to him and his party. I think that's undeniably the case. The timing of this, of course, as the questioner points out, really sharpens that concern. That's why I have called today, among other things, on President Bush to dispel those doubts, to take steps that will insulate our country in our dealings with other nations from the suspicion that this is playing a role. Specifically, I think he ought to stop using this issue on the campaign trail. I think he ought to tell the Republican National Committee to stop running ads on this issue.
Q: Your administration did little to evict Osama Bin Laden from Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks in the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Why?
A: We took many steps to try to eliminate him and his terrorist network. The support here at home, much less overseas, for a land invasion of Afghanistan by the armies of the United States was not present in any way prior to the attack on September 11. We did attack with our military forces from the air. We did use many of the assets that we have available to us, covert as well as overt, in an effort to dismantle his network. And we did not succeed in that. I think that the proposal now pending to have an independent investigation of what went wrong in the intelligence community during the last year and a half and before ought to be put in place. You know, having spent eight years reading the intelligence briefings every morning at the start of the day, six mornings a week, and knowing what was in those reports for the final two years I was there, I was amazed to read just a few days ago that on September 11 the FBI had one agent assigned to monitor Al Qaeda and to protect us against Osama Bin Laden. I found that absolutely incredible. Well, I bite my tongue about the rest of it.
Q: Had you been elected president, how might U.S. policy vis à vis Israel and Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East generally be different than it is today?
Audience members: You were elected.
A: First, let me say that I love this group. It's awfully good to be back in California. Just imagine, after flying on Air Force Two for eight years, I have to take off my shoes to get on an airplane. So when people say, "You were elected," I say well, you know, there's something missing here. I was in Florida last week. Did y'all notice that there was an election there last week? Jay Leno said he sent an investigative team from "The Tonight Show," and they discovered that the problem was that all the voting machines were still clogged with Gore-Lieberman ballots. I've tried to avoid this business of saying what I would have done differently from the president in the run up to September 11. But I will single out one thing that I think should have been done very differently. I alluded to it in my remarks. Once we pushed the Taliban out of power, I believe that we should have had a force of 30,000 to 35,000 international troops to come into Afghanistan and do like we did in Bosnia, and say, "Ok, y'all, there's a new sheriff in town, and just calm down." And after a while their blood pressure goes down and after awhile their general expectation of violence and conflict is replaced with a general expectation of cooperation. That was not done in Afghanistan. Many in our military advised that it be done. Many people close to the president, I read, advised that it be done. I don't know why it wasn't done, but if I had anything to say about it, it would have been done and would've been done very differently from the way it has been.
Q: The Bush Administration has made it clear that they wanted to use military force to bring about a regime change in Iraq. How likely is it that this will be the beginning of a chain reaction, spreading military action throughout the Middle East given the resentment of the United States on the streets of the region?
A: The situation in the region is different now than it was back in 1991. The Madrid Conference and the process surrounding it in 1991 had along with other factors had along with other factors created a sense of momentum and hope in the region. That, for a variety of reasons, and I won't get into all of it. I think that Yasser Arafat made a historic error in not seizing the chance for peace when it presented itself. But for a variety of reasons, the situation in the region is very different today. You will remember in 1991 we spent a lot of time advising Israel, working with Israel, to make sure that a response to any effort by Saddam to make the war an Arab-Israeli war would not succeed. Israel swallowed hard and did something that was very uncharacteristic, but very wise, in refraining from falling into Saddam's trap. We've now had a public pronouncement in advance that that would not be Israel's response this time. I don't second-guess Prime Minister Sharon's statement, because since the deadly nature of biological weapons is what it is, we have to respect what he believes is necessary to deter a deadly threat to the people of Israel. That is for them to judge. But again, it is a situation that we need to be aware of. And I don't have a crystal ball about whether a chain reaction would take place. I've seen lots and lots of situations where something like that is feared and never comes to pass. I think that the existence of an international coalition would make it far less likely that we would face risks like that in the aftermath of a military campaign. If we decided to go it alone, then the risks, whatever they, are would be greater than with a coalition.
Audience: We're more afraid of President Bush than we are of Saddam Hussein.
A: I shouldn't respond to that, but those of us who agree with various policy decisions of the president ought to keep our perspective. For us as American citizens to play the role we need to play in helping our nation make a very difficult set of decisions right now, we have to keep our wits about us and keep our priorities and values right and respect the democratic debate that has made our country what it is and that's what I intend to do.
Q: What is your reaction to the six-year postponement of the U.S. consideration of the biological weapons convention as amended recently by the U.S. government? Do agreements like this have a role in stemming the spread of weapons of mass destruction?
A: Well, absolutely. The fact that some manufacturers do not want to put up with the verification provisions that would come with that treaty should not be allowed to trump the national interest and having that treaty ratified. You know, this go-it-alone, cowboy-type approach to international affairs has been seen with the rejection of the Kyoto Treaty, on the biological weapons treaty, on various measures related to nonproliferation and it's actually a very long list, unfortunately. There have been a few times where I thought they were justified. I thought that this world criminal court was flawed, and maybe a compromise could have been worked out but I thought the administration made the right call on that one - a lot of people disagree - but most of the list, I think that we're hurting ourselves in not working with the rest of the world in putting into place measures that can enhance our national security, and the biological weapons treaty would be one of them.
Q: The final question is, are you going to run for president in 2004? If you're not sure, when will you make that decision and what will be the determining factors?
A: Well, I haven't ruled it out, and I will make the decision in December of this year. It'll be based on all kinds of sophisticated factors too complicated to get into here, often referred to by the scientific label gut feeling.
