Al Gore on Monday hammered President George W. Bush's policies -- especially on the Iraq war -- as he launched a new book called 'The Assault on Reason'.
WASHINGTON: Former vice president Al Gore on Monday hammered President George W. Bush's policies -- especially on the Iraq war -- as he launched a new book called The Assault on Reason.
The new work, which is due to be released on Tuesday, is a follow-up to Gore's best-selling analysis of global warming called An Inconvenient Truth, whose film adaptation won the Oscar for best documentary this year.
"I've been working on this climate crisis for so long, and that has led me to ask why it is that, in our great democracy, we have not yet reacted to the overwhelming evidence that we should respond to the climate crisis -- just as we did not react to the overwhelming evidence that it was a mistake to invade Iraq," the former deputy to then president Bill Clinton told ABC television.
"For anybody who has asked the question, 'Has something gone wrong in our country?' this book is about that. It's about what's gone wrong and how we can fix it," he said.
Gore, who was controversially defeated by Bush in the 2000 presidential election and remains popular among grass-roots Democrats, dismissed suggestions that the work was meant to lay the foundation for a 2008 White House bid.
"I'm not a candidate and this book is not a political book, it's not a candidate book at all. It's about the fact that there are cracks in the foundation of American democracy that have to be fixed," he said.
"There is hardly anybody in America left ... who doesn't believe that it was a terrible mistake to invade a country that didn't attack us," Gore added.
The former vice president said his book was a call on America's elected representatives to ensure they "are listening to reason -- are looking at the facts, and not brushing past them".
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