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A Speech That's No Joke By BOB HERBERT
Published: May 28, 2004 E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com <snip>If Mr. Gore is right, the nation is faced with a crisis of leadership that is perilously close to an emergency.<snip>
In an echo of the growing chorus of criticism here and around the world, he said the war has not only damaged "our strategic interests" and isolated the U.S. from its allies, it has also made the country more — not less — vulnerable to terror.
In a widely covered speech earlier in the day, Mr. Gore said that Iraq had not become, as President Bush has asserted, " `the central front in the war on terror.' " But he said it has become, unfortunately, "the central recruiting office for terrorists."<snip>
In the view of Mr. Gore (and many others), the essential problem has been the triumph in the Bush crowd of ideology over reality. The true believers knew everything better than everybody else, and the arrogance born of that certainty led, step by tragic step, to the war with no exit doors that we are locked in today.<snip>
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