Former US Vice President Al Gore on Wednesday demanded Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration
officials resign for encouraging policies that led to the abuse of
Iraqi prisoners and fanned hatred of Americans abroad.?
In a highly critical speech lasting more than an hour, Gore
labeled the Bush administration's Iraq war plan "incompetent" and
called George W. Bush the most dishonest president since Richard
Nixon, who resigned the office of the presidency in 1974 following
the Watergate scandal.
Gore, who lost the 2000 presidential election to Bush, said
Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA
director George Tenet should resign.
"We simply cannot afford to increase the risk to our country
with more blunders by this team," he told a crowded auditorium at
New York University in Manhattan.
"They are endangering the lives of our soldiers and sharply
increasing the danger faced by American citizens everywhere in the
world, including here at home," Gore said.
He decried the torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison and said
the abuse shown in pictures made public in recent weeks was "the
natural consequence of the Bush administration policy that has
dismantled ... America's checks and balances."
(China Daily via agencies, May 27, 2004)