Appendix 5. Gore Gets Gored, (part two)

From Bob Somerby, The Daily Howler, September 26, 2002 (http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh092602.shtml) Here, quoted at length, is Somberby’s dissection of Hume’s apparently deliberate deception: “On Tuesday evening’s Special Report, Brit Hume spun the spin quite nicely. First he played video from Gore’s Monday speech:

GORE (9/23/02): Back in 1991, I was one of a handful of Democrats in the United States Senate to vote in favor of the resolution endorsing the Persian Gulf War. And I felt betrayed by the first Bush administration’s hasty departure from the battlefield.

“All right,” Hume remarked, continuing directly. “Hasty departure from the battlefield.” Then he quoted something Gore said back in 1991:

GORE (4/18/91): I want to state this clearly. President Bush should not be blamed for Saddam Hussein’s survival to this point. There was throughout the war a clear consensus the United States should not include the conquest of Iraq among its objectives. On the contrary, it was universally accepted that our objective was to push Iraq out of Kuwait, and it was further understood that when this was accomplished, combat should stop.

Hume implied that Gore had contradicted himself. “How do we explain that, as against what he said yesterday?” he asked his crack, “all-star” panel.
But, as is so often the case in these GORE LIAR tales, Hume was quoting selectively. Here is the fuller text of what Gore actually said on Monday:

GORE (9/23/02): I was one of the few Democrats in the U.S. Senate who supported the war resolution in 1991. And I felt betrayed by the first Bush administration’s hasty departure from the battlefield, even as Saddam began to renew his persecution of the Kurds of the North and the Shiites of the South—groups we had encouraged to rise up against Saddam.

Absent-mindedly, Hume forgot to include the highlighted passage. When the highlighted statement is omitted, Gore’s comment on Monday seems to contradict what he said in 1991. With the highlighted passage left in, the statements are not contradictory.

Did Gore criticize Bush in 1991? Yes, he unmistakably did. He defended Bush’s decision to leave Saddam in place, but criticized his failure to protect the Kurds when Saddam began to persecute them (many others made this complaint). Here for example is a story segment from the 4/13/91 New York Times:

NEW YORK TIMES (4/13/91):

Gore Criticizes Bush
The difficulty for President Bush is that before he can extricate himself from Iraq, his postwar policy may become the centerpiece issue at the outset of the 1992 Presidential campaign season. One possible Democratic contender who supported Mr. Bush’s decision to go to war, Senator Al Gore of Tennessee, said today that Mr. Bush’s handling of the postwar insurrection in Iraq “revives the most bitter memories of humankind’s worst moments.”

That sounds like a criticism to us—and, of course, that “postwar insurrection” was the matter involving the Shiites and the Kurds. In short, Gore’s statement on Monday was perfectly accurate—if you quoted the statement in full.”