I'm not entirely sure but I don't think Gore did /accept/ the result but he stood aside because he was being warned about the damage that a prolonged court battle would do to the country.

And there is clear evidence now that had all the votes cast been correctly done so in Florida then Al Gore would have won FLorida and therefore would have won the Presidential Election.

It's a little bit late for all of that now but it is the case. Check out [Link] and a few other links on the site.

"It's almost like a moral decision. Except not really cos noone is going to find out," Jez, Peep Show

How about this for starters:

In the summer of 1999 Katherine Harris, who was both George W. Bush' presidential campaign co-chairwoman and the Flroida secretary of state in charge of elections, paid M to Database Technologies to go through Florida's voter rolls and remove anyone "suspected" of being a former felon. She did so with the blessing of the governor of Florida, George W. Bush' brother Jeb Bush - whose own wife was caught by immigration officials trying to sneak nineteen thousand dollars worth of jewelry into the country without declaring and paying tax on it...a felony in its own right.
(but apparently in America felons aren't prosecuted if they're rich or married to a governing Bush).

The law states that ex-felons cannot vote in Florida. Instantly 31% of all black men in Florida are prohibited from voting because they have a felony on their record. Harris and Bush knew that removing the names of ex-felons from the voter rolls would keep thousands of black citizens out of the voting booth. Black Floridians, overwhelmingly, are Democrats - and sure enough, Al Gore recieved the votes of more than 90% of them on November 7, 2000.

That is, 90% of those who were allowed to vote.

In what appears to be a mass fraud committed by the state of Florida, Bush, Harris, and the company not only removed thousands of black felons from the rolls, they also removed thousands of black citizens who had never committed a crime in their lives - along with thousands of eligible voters who had committed only misdemeanors.

173 000 registered voters in Florida were permanently wiped off the voter rolls.

George W. Bush would officially be credited with recieving 537 more votes than Al Gore in Florida. It is safe to assume that the thousands of black registered voters barred from the polls would have made a difference had they been allowed to vote. And cost Bush the election...

Edited by the despotic banana (18 Nov 2003 7:03pm)

A July 2001 investigation by the New York Times showed that of the 2,490 overseas ballots that ended up being included in the certified election results, 680 were considered flawed and questionable (there is a Florida law that states overseas absentee ballots can only be counted if they were cast and signed on or before election day, and mailed and postmarked from another country by election day). Bush got the overseas vote by a ratio of 4 to 5. By that percentage, 544 of the votes that went to Bush should have been thrown out. Suddenly Bush's winning margin of 537 votes is down to a chilly negative 7. Ouch.

What are the chances Gore would have done exactly the same as Bush if elected, by bombing Iraq, given the same set of circumstances? If you think yes he would have, then the vote rigging debate is only relevant for another anti-USA thread.

Edited by Penge Eagle (18 Nov 2003 10:18pm)

I quite agree. The policy of regime change in Iraq is actually Clinton's. It was his administration that upped the ante from containment to regime overthrow.

ChrisH OK, Saddam was an arse, and a pretty nasty one at that That's all you can say? He is directly responsible for the deaths of over 2 million people. Not including the people who starved to death because he controlled the food supply. Not to mention the estimated 183,000 Kurds he had gassed. Maybe there were no WMD because he used them all? They have already uncovered over 300,000 bodies in Iraq and they are still digging!

Whether I agree with the reasons for going to war or not: I am very pleased that this dictator is gone.

I am not proud of the record of the British or American governments on this issue, I think it has often been appalling.

Anyway, I entered this thread by stating that it was ironic that all these people were protesting against Bush, when the vast majority of them did nothing when our country (and others) supported such murderous regimes as Saddam's.

Why are people not protesting against what Putin is doing in Chechnya, 100,000 dead civilians and counting, not including the 94-96 war (add another 100,000 civilians).

I agree that George Bush is a threat to peace in the world. But we should also look at France and Russia. They might not be the biggest arms suppliers, but according to the UN they provided more than 90% of weapons sales to Iraq. And Russia and China, will (and have) literally sell to anything to anyone. Where do people think most landmines come from?

The single most desructive weapon in the world is the AK47. Millions of them proliferate and kill indiscriminately all over the world.

Where was Livingstone in the 80's when the Soviets killed millions of Afghans? He certainly was not describing them as threats to world peace.

He might take on Western arms companies, but I have never heard him get up and criticise the Russians for their arms sales. If memory serves me, he has not criticised the old Soviet government for selling mines to all and sundry. (I would be pleased to stand corrected)

What I do not like is the double standard. I see America, often rightly, get bashed. What I do not see is those same people attacking those other leaders and countries for often doing the same or sometimes worse. That is why I often believe this is nothing more than blatant anti-Americanism.

Thank you Penge Eagle.