It has been clear to many of us for some time that Al Gore is a Judas when it comes to the interests of American citizens and their living life-support system, the environment.

And just like with child abuse where 80 percent of the abuse is not at the hands of the "bad guys" but at the hands of trusted friends and family members - so too with Al Gore. Because he has been perceived as a friend of the environment, and still is by many as a "lesser evil," he has been able to engineer and get away with doing worse harm. Much of the Clinton/Gore illegal environmental destruction would never have been allowed under Reagan/Bush by those now supporting the most right-wing, conservative Democratic ticket in 50 years, Gore/Lieberman.

This book brings to light some of the irrefutable evidence and once again reveals that Gore has clearly and callously abandoned his principles, our citizens and our environment while fundraising for corporate cash. Yet many in the Democratic cult continue to support what is more accurately described as the New Republican wing of the Democratic Leadership Council's version of the Democrats.

This book is a must read for all non-voters and Democrats and hopefully we can then avoid being sheep to the slaughter.

Fellow conservationists & Democrats, where is the will to win? With so much of our Civil Liberties already lost; with less than five percent of our original native forests left, we must start fighting for what's right; saving what's left and restoring everything that has been lost. It's time we started fighting as if our lives (and the lives of our children) depended on it. Because, ultimately, they do.

(This is my personal opinion)

Tim Hermach, President Native Forest Council

zerocut1@forestcouncil.org

The book Al Gore: A User's Manual, by Cockburn and St. Clair, illustrates the lies that have been the legacy of Al Gore. Throughout the book, the thin veneer of liberalism that Gore wears is stripped down and the reader sees the real Gore: a closet conservative whose record is anti-environment, anti-choice, and anti-labor. This book details the numerous "reinventions of Gore" and shows that if you side with him, he'll let you down. Just ask the people in East Liverpool Ohio, who now live next to the WTI Hazardous Waste Incinerator that Gore promised to shut down. This book is an important part of the literature that demystifies Gore and his treachery to the progressives of this country.

Find out in this book how Al Gore while vice president helped companies loot millions of acres of our forests, fastened the extinction of the spotted owl, blocked efforts to make companies pay more than little or no royalty fees to loot taxpayer owned resources, helped increase contractor fraud at the Pentagon, helped strengthen the racist and civil liberties destroying criminal justice system, supported drilling off the coast of Mexico and in the National Petroleum reserve in Alaska, supported stripping mining, especially that of the mountain top removal variety, supported the setting of emissions standards well below that of the Kyoto protocol which were never met, helped George W. pollute Texas by his support of Nafta, helped strengthen fossil fuel producers, helped weaken Affirmative action in government, supported the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, supported what will perhaps one day be the destruction of the U'wa people in Colombia through his very extensive relationship with Occidental Petroleum and support for the death squad government there, supported Monsanto's crusade to dump genitically modified foods on Europe, presided over an economy of stagnant and declining wages and greater insecurity for American workers. The list can go on and on.

They give a good outline of Gore's congressional career. They portray him as pro-gun (not too different than Mr. Cockburn's views of course), pro-tabacoo, pro-Reaganite arms buildup (he was a prime mober for the midgetman missle), a consisten support of the Jesse Helms line on the homosexual question, someone who while occasionally roaring against the more blatant corporate criminals turned a blind eye to the radiation tests that gave children leukemia ( killing at least one) at the Oak Ridge nuclear lab in Tennesse and helped establish a precedent by getting a waiver on the Endagered species act against the snail darter species for a worthless dam that only benefited construction and cement magnates. In the 88' campaign he campaigned as right wing demagogue because that is what Patrick Caddell, the pollster, told him what the "silent majority" were looking for. Actually a not insubstantial part of that group was inclined to support Jesse Jackson and Gore did very badly in the primaries but not before travelling to New York for the party elite to help ruin Jackson's canidacy along with the demagogue Ed Koch.

The section on Tipper's crusade against obscene lyrics is rather amusing--the supposed Gore family encounter with the music of Prince which originally spurred Tipper on her crusade and Gore praising the music of Frank Zappa during a senate hearing.

The authors could have done a little less of the "tell-all stuff"==e.g. how policy was supposedly made and interactions in the white house e.g. Bob Woodward's account of Clinton's alleged reaction to having to break his campaign promises and support Alan Greenspan's neoliberalism--and expanded on some of the more important issues. They say absolutely nothing about a very important issue, about Gore's working to pressure African countries, paritcularly South Africa, into complying with drug company patents which block countries from producing genereic AIDs drugs at very substantially lower cost. They repeat the canard about Gore claiming he invented the internet, that he and Tipper were the inspiration for "Love Story" and so on.

But overall this book is so much more substantive than the book put out by Cockburn's former friend Christopher Hitchens. The latter's book was fawned over by the likes of Chris Mathews, David Horowitz and Larry Klayment of Judicial Watch. Rush Limbaugh called Hitchens, a self-declared hardcore socialist, "our favorite liberal." The authors have gotten no such attention and that is very telling.