Al Gore Claims US of "Terrible Abuses" Against Arabs

Hat tip www.RealClearPolitics.com with links to the Las Vegas Review-Journal Feb. 17, 2006 editorial What is Al Gore thinking? Comments in Middle East border on bizarre

■ Former Vice-President Al “Gore told a mainly Saudi audience Sunday [February 12, 2006] that the U.S. government committed "terrible abuses" against Arabs after the Sept. 11 attacks.
■ Mr. Gore said Arabs in the United States have been "indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges of overstaying a visa or not having a green card in proper order, and held in conditions that were just unforgivable."
■ The editorial wonders “In an Arab world where torture, beheadings and the cutting off of hands are considered
normal sanctions not just for real felonies but also for "heresy" and other thought crimes, what on earth must Mr. Gore's listeners have imagined he meant by "terrible abuses"?
■ “What must an audience familiar with prison conditions in Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia picture when Mr. Gore speaks of "unforgivable" conditions?”
■ “One doubts they were picturing a warm dry cot, indoor plumbing and three square meals a day while an illegal immigrant who had knowingly outstayed his visa waited for a scheduled court hearing.”

The most telling difference in polling between Democrats and Republicans is the answer to the question “Would the world be better off if other countries were more like the United States? or “Would the world be better off if the United States was more like other countries?

I suspect that even the Abu Ghraib prison when run by Americans in Iraq is more humane than most any prison in the Middle East.