Letter: Imagine what could have been with Gore

Friday, March 16, 2007 | 6:55 a.m.

After winning the 2000 election, Vice President Al Gore put together a great Cabinet, which included Gary Hart, a Democrat, as secretary of state, and he kept on William Cohen, a Republican, as secretary of defense.

After 9/11, President Gore, as commander-in-chief, ordered the invasion of Afghanistan to go after al-Qaida. Within short order, Gore's military had cornered Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora mountain range, where he was captured. Gore had bin Laden whisked away to the United States, where he was tried, found guilty and placed before a firing squad in the cavity left by the destruction of the World Trade Center.

President Gore then continued the "no-fly zones" of the two preceding administrations, making sure that Saddam was no threat to the U.S. or the region. Saddam was under complete control of the coalition with no possible way of escaping the investigators from the U.N.

The brilliant statesman that he was, Gore dispatched Hart to sit down with Saddam, wherein they agreed in writing that Saddam would divert much of his vast oil production to the U.S. in return for diplomatic relations. The gas price at the pump dropped dramatically to below one dollar a gallon. This move rendered Saddam helpless and no threat to his neighbors and, of course, to the U.S.

Not finished, Gore sent Hart to Iran and North Korea to cement dialogue between the U.S. and those troublesome nations.

In Gore's second term, there became a groundswell of clamoring to repeal the 22nd Amendment so Gore could run again. That failed, of course, in the Republican-controlled Supreme Court.

But for all of the above diplomatic and other victories, we now live in a peaceful era, no wars and in an era where all of the world respects and envies us.

James J. Poupard, Henderson