Barnes falsely claimed Gore "flipped on Iraq"

On the August 12 edition of Fox News' The Beltway Boys, co-host and Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes falsely claimed that former Vice President Al Gore has "flipped on Iraq." In fact, as Media Matters for America has noted, Gore has consistently opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Barnes argued that with the defeat of Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman in the August 8 Connecticut Democratic primary, the Democratic Party lost its "last living hawk on national security." He further stated that while Gore "used to be a hawk," he has since "flipped on Iraq." In fact, in a September 2002 speech, Gore made clear his reasons for opposing the United States' Iraq policy, explaining how his opposition to President Bush's push for the invasion of Iraq was consistent with his support of the 1991 war against Iraq. He stated that, although "in 1991, I was one of a handful of Democrats in the United States Senate to vote in favor of the resolution endorsing the [first] Persian Gulf War," and Saddam Hussein's "Iraq does ... pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf region," "I am deeply concerned that the course of action that we are presently embarking upon with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century."

Gore noted that "in 1991, Iraq had crossed an international border, invaded a neighboring sovereign nation [Kuwait] and annexed its territory. Now, by contrast, in 2002, there has been no such invasion." Gore stated that Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1991 had made it "easier" to assemble "a broad international coalition" that supported and "paid all of the significant costs of the war." In contrast, Gore noted, "many of our allies in Europe and Asia are ... openly opposed to what President Bush is doing [in 2002]." He asserted that if the United States acted against Iraq without the support of a broad coalition, it would "severely damage[]" America's ability to "secure[] the continuing, sustained cooperation of many nations" in the fight against terrorism.

Gore also argued that "we [the United States] should focus our efforts first and foremost against those who attacked us on September 11th and who have thus far gotten away with it." He also criticized Bush for "fail[ing] ... to lay out an assessment of how ... the course of a war will run" and "what would follow ... in Iraq in the months and years after a regime change has taken place," and for "assert[ing] that we will take preemptive action even if the threat we perceive is not imminent." Gore argued that "[i]f other nations assert that same right [to pre-emption], "then the rule of law will quickly be replaced by the reign of fear."

This is the second time Gore has been accused of changing position on Iraq. As Media Matters documented, in his monthly Washington Post column, Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a German Marshall Fund transatlantic fellow, assailed Gore for his "astonishing reversal" on the United States' Iraq policy and for "turn[ing] on all those with whom he once agreed."

From the August 12 edition of Fox News' The Beltway Boys:

BARNES: Welcome back to The Beltway Boys. Hot story number two: "Left Turn."

[Co-host] Mort [Kondracke], dumping Lieberman really tells you a lot about the -- about today's Democratic Party in -- and nominating a -- a limousine liberal like Ned Lamont does as well. I mean, Lieberman is not a nobody. He'll be -- he was the vice presidential running mate to Al Gore on the Democratic ticket in 2006 [sic]. He is the last leading hawk -- and they used to call them Cold War liberals, Kennedy, FDR, Truman and all those -- he's the last living hawk on national security.

And he's been bounced. I mean, the others -- Al Gore used to be a hawk. He flipped on Iraq. [Former vice presidential candidate] John Edwards -- well, he was never that much of a hawk. He's flipped too, as others have. [Sen.] John Kerry [D-MA] pretended to be a hawk, but -- but he's flipped.