Gore to Outline Iraq Viewpoint
Sept. 18 -- Former Vice President Al Gore plans to break his recent silence on U.S. policy towards Iraq in a speech to members of California's august Commonwealth Club this coming Monday.
The speech, scheduled to be delivered at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, is open to the press and being touted by Gore aides well in advance, a signal that Gore hopes the public will hear his words.
Gores aides declined to say whether Gore would follow the lead of most Democrats running for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination and adopt a harsh line toward Saddam Hussein and a doubtful attitude about U.N. weapons inspections.
Sen. Joseph Leiberman, D-Conn, Rep. Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., and Sen. John Edwards, D-NC., have said they support President Bush's position that regime change is a worthy and urgent goal.
In February, Gore told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York that "as far as I am concerned, a final reckoning with that government should be on the table. To my way of thinking, the real question is not the principle of the thing, but of making sure that this time we will finish the matter on our terms."
Still, in the same speech, he said the administration hadn't done enough to make America's allies feel consulted and appeared, at times, too dismissive of their interests and internal political situations.
Gore Critical of Bush Foreign Policy
And Gore has also been very critical of the administration's foreign policy competence in other areas, particularly the Middle East.
Gore's stance on Iraq differs from other Democrats running for president, including Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who has shown restraint and not fully endorsed a war resolution, and Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who urges caution.
And his rhetoric differs in tone from the views his long-time chief foreign policy adviser, Leon Fuerth, has expressed.
In January of 2002, Fuerth said that "an immediate attack in Iraq, in my opinion, is infeasible for many reasons."
He said he would prefer a "draconian" program of U.N. weapons inspections and would urge the administration to encourage the Iraqi National Congress to act on its own accord.
Fuerth is said be assisting Gore with the speech.
The Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco and the Commonwealth Club have hosted numerous historical speeches. Gore's speech is 70 years to the day after Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced his New Deal in 1932. Former Vice President Dan Quayle criticized Murphy Brown for promoting single motherhood in 1992, and most recently, Vice President Dick Cheney broke a summer's silence with a tough speech on foreign policy in August.
