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Democrats have stepped up their attacks on the George W Bush
administration for it’s handling of the war in Iraq and the
fight against global terrorism, which they say has threatened US
civil liberties.
"They created this campaign to bolster their standing in the polls,
to bolster their political support around the country, and they
used these devices I think to a certain extent to intimidate
people," Tom Daschle, leader of Democrats the Republican-controlled
US Senate, told NBC television yesterday.
The South Dakota senator's comments followed a scathing, hour-long
speech delivered Sunday by former Vice President Al Gore, accusing
the Bush administration of exploiting Americans' fear of terrorism
for political gain.
"In my opinion, it makes no more sense to launch an assault on our
civil liberties as the best way to get at terrorists, than it did
to launch an invasion on Iraq as the best way to get at Osama bin
Laden," Gore told a cheering crowd of some 3 000 Democratic
activists on Sunday.
"I want to challenge the Bush administration's implicit assumption
that we have to give up many of our traditional freedoms in order
to be safe from terrorists," Gore told the audience at a forum
sponsored by the liberal political group MoveOn.org and the
American Constitution Society, a left-of-center legal group.
Gore was particularly critical of the US Patriot Act, the
anti-terror legislation passed by the US Congress in the aftermath
of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.
The US Justice Department has said its expanded police
investigative and surveillance powers under the legislation are the
cornerstone of its battle against terrorism, but Gore said the bill
has eroded the civil liberties of Americans and has "turned out to
be, on balance, a terrible mistake".
The former vice president also was critical of the administration's
detention of American citizens as enemy combatants, its treatment
of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and the rounding up of
hundreds of illegal immigrants since September 11, 2001.
"They have taken us much further down the road toward an intrusive
'big brother' style of government than anyone ever thought would be
possible in the US," Gore said Sunday. – Sapa-AFP.
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