Right Wingers Fear Al Gore

The right wing attacks on Gore have been increasing of late. One of their key themes is that he's irrelevant which seems an odd theme to pursue if he is irrelevant. No, it's not too difficult to understand what's going on. Al Gore speaks the truth about the current administration and that makes the White House nervous just as Joe Wilson's truthful comments about the false claims by the administration that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Niger led to odd meltdown by the vice president and Scooter Libby. I'm not going to link to right wing commentary. Simply type in Al Gore on Google and readers will find what I mean; his recent speech in Saudi Arabia obviously struck a nerve with the lunatic fringe. Here's a brief summary of the speech as reported by ABC News:

Former Vice President Al Gore told a mainly Saudi audience on Sunday that the U.S. government committed "terrible abuses" against Arabs after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and that most Americans did not support such treatment.

Gore said Arabs had been "indiscriminately rounded up" and held in "unforgivable" conditions. The former vice president said the Bush administration was playing into al-Qaida's hands by routinely blocking Saudi visa applications.

"The thoughtless way in which visas are now handled, that is a mistake," Gore said during the Jiddah Economic Forum. "The worst thing we can possibly do is to cut off the channels of friendship and mutual understanding between Saudi Arabia and the United States."

Gore told the largely Saudi audience, many of them educated at U.S. universities, that Arabs in the United States had been "indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges of overstaying a visa or not having a green card in proper order, and held in conditions that were just unforgivable."

"Unfortunately there have been terrible abuses and it's wrong," Gore said. "I do want you to know that it does not represent the desires or wishes or feelings of the majority of the citizens of my country."

Right wing commentators have been criticizing Al Gore for even showing up at the economic conference. Now that's strange since Tony Blair's wife also spoke at the same conference. If anyone deserved criticism, it was Peter Robertson, vice chairman of Chevron:

Also at the forum, the vice chairman of Chevron Corp., Peter Robertson, said President Bush's desire to cut U.S. dependence on Mideast oil shows a "misunderstanding" of global energy supply and the critical role of Saudi Arabia.

In his State of the Union address this month, Bush pledged to cut U.S. dependence on Middle East oil by 75 percent by 2025.

"This notion of being energy independent is completely unreasonable," Robertson said at the economic forum, which opened Saturday.

Given Chevron's record profits, Mr. Robertson comments are not exactly unbiased nor in the best interests of the United States.

By the way, Gore also criticized Iran and called on Arab nations to take a stand against Iran's nuclear program. In a time when we need cooler heads to deal with the Middle East and Iran, it seems to me that Gore is one of those more reasonable voices we've been looking for. But the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party seems to have an itch to start WWIII with Iran for reasons that are not in the best interests of the United States. If Americans don't want another pointless war, they need to make their voices heard.