Gore Spreading Terrorist Propaganda In Saudi Arabia
AP - Former US 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."
Indiscriminately rounded up? Collecting people who are in this country pass the date on which their visa expires or don't have all of their immigration papers in order does not sound "indiscriminate" to me.
As for them being held in "terrible conditions," that isn't true either. Sure some Democrats think the detention facility down in Guantanamo Bay is equivalent to a Stalin-era gulag, but that point (as far-out as it may be) is irrelevant to this discussion. Gitmo is a detention facility for foreign combatants captured in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. People arrested on immigration violations here in the U.S. are kept in a federal prison somewhere, not a military prison.
To me these claims from Gore sound suspiciously like the sort of thing you'd read in propaganda put out by al Qaeda or some terror-sympathizing organization. They are, essentially, unfounded accusations aimed at tarnishing America's image in the world. What's worse is that they're coming from the mouth of a former Vice President, and not because they are true but because he feels they will help him in his campaign against his political enemies.
What Al Gore has done here is shameful and pathetic. Moreso in that Gore is apparently spreading this sort of garbage overseas where he probably thinks most Americans won't get wind of it.












