LOS ANGELES, Nov. 20 — Al Gore said today that
the United States had failed to destroy Osama bin Laden and
dismantle the network of Al Qaeda because President
Bush spent the fall campaign "beating the drums of war against
Saddam Hussein" instead of prosecuting the war
on terror.
As a result, Mr. Gore said, Americans are as much at risk of a terrorist attack now as they were before Sept. 11.
Mr. Gore said that while the administration had
stumbled abroad in dealing with Al Qaeda, it had undertaken the "most
systematic invasion of privacy of every American
citizen that has ever been taken in this country" with the expanded use
of
wiretapping and secret court proceedings in the
war on terrorism.
"We have always held out the shibboleth of Big
Brother as a nightmarish vision of the future that we're going to avoid
at all
costs," Mr. Gore said, speaking heatedly and
intensely in an interview here this morning. "They have now taken the most
fateful
step in the direction of that Big Brother nightmare
that any president has ever allowed to occur."
Mr. Gore offered some of his sharpest attacks
on Mr. Bush's foreign and terrorism policies since his defeat in 2000 in
an
hourlong interview. It was part of an orchestrated
cross-country crush of interviews with television and print journalists,
designed, ostensibly, to promote two new books
Mr. Gore wrote with his wife, Tipper, both about the American family.
But this meticulously planned roll-out — Mr. Gore
gave 10 interviews today alone — has also served to give the former vice
president extraordinary high visibility, and
a run of highly favorable television coverage, at the very moment he is
preparing to
announce whether he will seek a rematch with
Mr. Bush in 2004.
Mr. Gore said he would not decide until the end
of the year whether to run again, but his attack on Mr. Bush's terrorism
policies
was a clear effort to differentiate himself in
a Democratic presidential field that was threatening to leave the gate
without him. It
also seemed intended to give voters — and Democratic
leaders, many of whom have been critical of Mr. Gore's absence from
the public stage — a preview of how he might
run against Mr. Bush. Although Mr. Gore made reference today to the disputed
circumstances by which he lost the 2000 presidential
election, he made it clear that he did not think it gave him any advantage
over his Democratic rivals.
"I think where all the fundamentals are concerned,
I would not be able to take anything for granted," he said. "I don't think
the
party owes me a red cent for what I went through
in 2000. I think that it would be starting over."
Some Democrats say they fear that Mr. Bush may
prove difficult to defeat precisely because of his association with the
issues
that Mr. Gore took on today.
Afghanistan "is falling back into chaos," Mr.
Gore said. "Osama is back. Al Qaeda has reconstituted itself and, according
to the
director of central intelligence, possesses just
as severe a threat to us right now as it did during the weeks leading up
to Sept. 11.
Meanwhile, the president has been out on the
campaign trail, beating the drums of war against Saddam Hussein."
"Now, there are ample reasons to go after Saddam
Hussein," Mr. Gore said. "He's a bad guy and he ought to be removed from
office. But we have a terrorist organization
trying to kill us right now."
In the interview, Mr. Gore said Mr. Bush had invoked
Mr. Hussein at the start of the fall campaign in a successful effort to
frame
the midterm elections to the benefit of Republicans
— and to divert attention from what he described as the administration's
failure to deal with Al Qaeda. He said the administration
was paying a cost for that now, as evidenced by the apparent
emergence of Mr. bin Laden's voice on a tape
recording that surfaced last week.
"I think they lost focus," Mr. Gore said in remarks
that served to build on a speech he delivered in September when he asserted
that Mr. Bush would not be able to plan at one
time for a war against Iraq while still dealing with Al Qaeda. "And I think
the
country is paying a price for it."
"I do think that dismantling the Al Qaeda network
and rendering them incapable of threatening us — the way they do right
now
— I think that is a measure of success," Mr.
Gore said. "And I think our chances of success, so defined, have been drastically
damaged by the president's decision in the run-up
to the election to shift all the focus to an entirely different new war."
Claire Buchan, a White House spokeswoman, dismissed
Mr. Gore's criticisms as posturing and said, "The president is uniting
America and the world in the global war against
terrorism and we are making immense progress both at home and abroad."
As to Mr. Gore's remarks about privacy, Ms. Buchan
said, "The president is committed to protecting the American people and
doing everything possible to protect the American
people in a way that adheres to the Constitution."
If he does not run for president in 2004, Mr.
Gore said, he will probably never do so again. Some aides have advised
him to
wait until 2008 rather than risk defeat to a
strong incumbent. "I think for all intents and purposes, a decision on
2004 is a
decision on whether I have a future in politics
or not," he said.
Although he was described by some friends as concerned
that another loss to Mr. Bush would be a devastating coda to his
political career, Mr. Gore said that was not
something he would consider in making his decision.
Mr. Gore acknowledged that, should he run again,
he would have to deal with some problems of his own making. In particular,
the former vice president has been criticized
by Democratic leaders who complained that they had not personally heard
from him
since election night, an absence that reinforced
Mr. Gore's reputation in some corners as awkward and aloof.
"They have a legitimate complaint," Mr. Gore said
today. "And that was a trade-off I chose to make. After a quarter of a
century
I needed the time off from politics. If I decide
to run again, I'm sure that will be a problem for me."
By contrast, asked if he was concerned about some
state Democratic leaders who criticized him and said he should stay out
of
this race, Mr. Gore shrugged, and said: "I don't
think they matter a lot. I respect their opinions. And I would take them
into
account. But I don't think it matters very much."
The one area in which Mr. Gore said he was not
worried was one that had come to be a bane of the Clinton administration:
fund-raising.
"There will be a whole lot of factors to put on
the table," he said in discussing his decision-making process. "Some will
be things
to worry about. Some will be strengths to build
on. Fund-raising will not be in the worry category."
Mr. Gore did say he respected the argument by
some Democrats that the party needed new blood to move ahead from the
defeat of this past election. Asked whether he
considered himself new blood, Mr. Gore paused for a long time, and began
to
laugh.
"I went to see Bob Dylan in Madison Square Garden
last week and he gave a terrific show and I was reminded of one of his
lyrics that I think answers your question," Mr.
Gore said. The vice president then leaned forward, and reaching back to
1964,
began to sing, slightly off-key, from Mr. Dylan's
"My Back Pages."
"I was so much older then," sang Mr. Gore, who is 54. "I'm younger than that now."