Al Gore launches blistering attack on Bush

LONDON: Launching a furious attack on President George Bush for his policies on Iraq and global warming, former US vice president has said in both the cases the best evidence was ignored.

"In both cases there was more than sufficient evidence to convince any reasonable person that the invasion of Iraq was a catastrophic mistake and the failure to begin sharply reducing Co2 was an even worse mistake," Al Gore said in his new book, 'The Assault on Reason'.

The central thesis of his book is that America has been lulled into a stupor, offering Bush the opportunity he richly craved to bypass or seize control of institutions and to govern through an extremist ideology.

"Reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions," he writes.

Al Gore, who was vice president for eight years and Congressman for 16 years, seems almost sickened by the business of politics, a report in 'The Guardian' on Saturday said.

He elucidates that disgust in 'The Assault on Reason'. The book is a furnace blast of rage against the presidency of George Bush.

It's hard to square the 2000 campaign descriptions of Gore as wooden and bloodless with a text that calls the invasion of Iraq 'the worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States', and accuses the Bush administration of presiding over a 'moral cesspool'.

Gore also writes that the president reminds him most strongly of Richard Nixon, that he is 'out of touch with reality' and lacking in curiosity.

Gore believes the Bush Presidency is the manifestation of a far deeper problem.

Referring to Hillary Clinton's recent admission that she had not read the intelligence brief on Iraq before voting for war against Saddam Hussein, Al gore noted that he believes blaming individuals is not the answer.

"The individuals that failed to discharge their responsibilities as elected officials to master their briefs is important, but to me, the more important question is how the United States of America could have been so vulnerable to such crass manipulation."

"Many of them were afraid of being branded unpatriotic, sure, and many journalists were, as many have since acknowledged, and that is unhealthy in a democracy," he said.

Gore is determined that climate change will play a role in the 2008 elections, even if he does not run.  His advocacy organization, the Alliance for Climate Protection, plans to run adverts across America during the campaign.

After testifying to Congress earlier this year, Gore has been meeting privately with presidential candidates.

He has yet to decide which Democratic candidate to support in the 2008 primaries. In 2004 he endorsed Howard Dean, the anti-war candidate who briefly captivated the Democratic party before his campaign burned out in the Iowa caucuses.

While Gore says the candidate's stand on Iraq will be crucial in his calculation, he would not rule out support for someone who was a previous supporter of the war if they had a reasonable explanation for their change of position.

On July 7, he will preside over Live Earth, a rock concert taking place on seven continents over 24 hours. It is designed to mobilize millions of people on climate change, and so reach a tipping point, where it becomes impossible for governments not to act.