Gore Speaks--Updated
(Pic lifted from
Junkyard Blog)
Predictably,
it's awful.
In keeping with the MLK-Day theme, Gore brings up the wiretapping of Martin Luther King.
This campaign continued until Dr. King's murder. The discovery that the FBI conducted a long-running and extensive campaign of secret electronic surveillance designed to infiltrate the inner workings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and to learn the most intimate details of Dr. King's life, helped to convince Congress to enact restrictions on wiretapping.
The result was the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA), which was enacted expressly to ensure that foreign intelligence surveillance would be presented to an impartial judge to verify that there is a sufficient cause for the surveillance. I voted for that law during my first term in Congress and for almost thirty years the system has proven a workable and valued means of according a level of protection for private citizens, while permitting foreign surveillance to continue.Amazing how they came up with a "Foreign" Intelligence and Surveillance Act in response to a case of domestic wiretapping, eh? And to think that it was only ten years after MLK's death that the law was enacted!
Gore brings up the ridiculous statistic on Abu Ghraib often cited by liberals:
Over 100 of these captives have reportedly died while being tortured by Executive Branch interrogators and many more have been broken and humiliated. In the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, investigators who documented the pattern of torture estimated that more than 90 percent of the victims were innocent of any charges.This is so completely goofy as to defy common sense. I would love to see the documents that say that 90% of the "victims" at Abu Ghraib were innocent of any charges. I mean, are we talking about OJ Simpson innocent?
Indeed, the only way that this stat makes any sense is if you believe in the Ted Rall caricature of our soldiers; that they are drooling sadists just looking for a chance to torture some Ayrabs for the fun of it.
Update: Here's
a source for the 90% figure cited in the comments by DDT.
Report: 70%-90% held in error in Iraq
By Alexander G. Higgins
The Associated Press
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 05.11.2004
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GENEVA - Some 70 percent to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested "by mistake," according to coalition intelligence officers cited in a Red Cross report disclosed Monday.But of course, that is 70-90% of Iraqi detainees everywhere, not just those at Abu Ghraib, and of course there is no distinction made as to the amount of time the people were detained, as this passage makes clear:
While many detainees were quickly released, high-ranking officials in Saddam Hussein's government - including those listed on the U.S. military's deck of cards - were held for months in solitary confinement.And also get the hedging on "innocent":
It was unclear what the Red Cross meant by "mistake." However, many Iraqis over the past year have claimed they were arrested by American forces because of misunderstandings, bogus claims by personal enemies, mistaken identity or simply for having been at the wrong place at the wrong time.And where does this information come from? According to
this post by Kevin Drum it comes from "Certain CF (coalition forces) military intelligence officers" estimate.
So to reiterate, the Red Cross says an unknown number of military intelligence officers estimated that 70-90% of all Iraqis detained at any time and for any length of time before about March 2004 were arrested by mistake. From which Al Gore concludes that
over 90% of those "tortured"
at Abu Ghraib were
innocent.
The President has also claimed that he has the authority to kidnap individuals in foreign countries and deliver them for imprisonment and interrogation on our behalf by autocratic regimes in nations that are infamous for the cruelty of their techniques for torture.But as we have
talked about in the past, this practice of "extraordinary rendition" actually began in what administration, class? That's right,
the Clinton Administration.
Beginning around 1995, the Central Intelligence Agency inaugurated a form of extradition sometimes referred to as "extraordinary rendition," in which captured foreign terrorism suspects have been transported by the U.S. to third countries for interrogation and prosecution.There's more, much more, but it's typical Gorespeak: half blather half insomnia cure. See
Ankle-Biting Pundits for more. Reliapundit
also has a good post up on this.
