My theory was correct: this is the new front on the terror war; it’s the latest skirmish between the Als and the Bushes…

AP: Former Vice President al Gore placed blame for the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal

directly on the Bush administration officials, who he believes put in place policies of “dominance and the disregard for the policy of law.” …Gore [claimed] that those policies are what led soldiers to abuse prisoners, and that top officials are therefore responsible for the scandal.

From Gore’s MoveOn speech:

“[Bush] decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. …Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention. …These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House. Indeed, the President’s own legal counsel advised him specifically on the subject. His secretary of defense and his assistants pushed these cruel departures from historic American standards… Nor did these abuses spring from a few twisted minds at the lowest ranks of our military enlisted personnel. No, it came from twisted values and atrocious policies at the highest levels of our government. This was done in our name, by our leaders. …The same grotesque misunderstanding of what is really involved was responsible for the tone in the memo from the president’s legal advisor, Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote on January 25, 2002, that 9/11 “renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.” …The abhorrent acts in the prison were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity encouraged, authorized and instituted by Bush and Rumsfeld in their statements that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. The apparent war crimes that took place were the logical, inevitable outcome of policies and statements from the administration. …he should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva Conventions.

I challenge the F.V.P. to find a single line of the Geneva Conventions that has been abandoned by the Bush Administration. Actually, al Gore is upset because Bush hasn’t offered an unilateral amendment to the Geneva Conventions that would protect terrorists and illegal combatants, while undermining the international treaty system. I wish Gore and his crew were half as interested in stopping foreign terrorism and terrorist acts such as the murder of Nick Berg (not once mentioned in the speech) as they are in placing the blame for snafus like the one at Abu Ghraib (a term specifically mentioned 10 times in his speech) on their domestic political opposition.

Here are some other Gore comments, sprinkled with fact-check hyperlinks:

The war plan was incompetent in its rejection of the advice from military professionals and the analysis of the intelligence was incompetent in its conclusion that our soldiers would be welcomed with garlands of flowers and cheering crowds.

…Zinni’s book will join a growing library of volumes by former advisors to Bush — including his principal advisor on terrorism, Richard Clarke; his principal economic policy advisor, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, former Ambassador Joe Wilson…

Finally, al Gore quotes David Kay and the President on Iraqi WMDs. Let’s see how these quotes look in context:

David Kay concluded his search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with the famous verdict: “we were all wrong.” And for many Americans, Kay’s statement seemed to symbolize the awful collision between Reality and all of the false and fading impressions President Bush had fostered in building support for his policy of going to war.

Vs.

“In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [U.N.] Resolution 1441. Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities — one last chance to come clean about what it had. We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material.” - David Kay

Next:

…[The President] asked the nation, in his State of the Union address, to “imagine” how terrified we should be that Saddam was about to give nuclear weapons to terrorists and stated repeatedly that Iraq posed a grave and gathering threat to our nation.

Vs.

“I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force - if necessary - to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.” - Senator John Kerry, Oct 9, 2002

And here’s the quote to end all quotes:

“Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.” - Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

Explain that one, pal.