Bush’s Iraq Policies ‘Atrocious,’ Gore Says

Al Gore delivered a blistering denunciation Wednesday of the Bush administration’s “twisted values and atrocious policies” in Iraq and demanded the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George J. Tenet.

Raising his voice to a yell in a speech at New York University, Gore said: “How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace! How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein’s torture prison!”

The former Democratic vice president said the situation in Iraq was spinning out of control.

“I am calling today for Republicans as well as Democrats to join me in asking for the immediate resignations of those immediately below George Bush and Dick Cheney, who are most responsible for creating the catastrophe we are facing in Iraq,” Gore said, drawing strong applause from the partisan crowd.

“Donald Rumsfeld ought to resign immediately! Our nation is at risk every single day Rumsfeld remains as secretary of Defense. We need someone with good judgment and common sense.”

Rice “ought to resign immediately,” he added. “She has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy. This is a disaster for our country.

“It came from twisted values and atrocious policies at the highest levels of our government.”

The former presidential candidate was gentler on Tenet, a Clinton administration appointee, describing him as a friend and “honorable man” who should still leave his job over intelligence failures.

The Republican National Committee shot back at Gore, pointing out that while he was vice president, terrorists attacked U.S. embassies in Africa, bombed the U.S. destroyer Cole and carried out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. “Al Gore’s attacks on the president today demonstrate that he either does not understand the threat of global terror or he has amnesia,” RNC spokesman Jim Dyke said in a statement.

Gore also said the abuse of Iraqi inmates was not the result of “a few bad apples” but “the natural consequence of the Bush administration policy.”

He said the crisis in Iraq had generated fierce anti-American sentiment and provided a strong recruiting tool for terror groups.