Pen-Elayne on the Web

A-Gore-Able

Tons of bloggers have already linked to Al Gore's mostly excellent speech to MoveOn.org at NYU yesterday, but nobody I've read so far has nitpicked* Moveon's misspelling of "the president ought to reign in John Ashcroft" (it should be "rein" of course, although since GWB is often referred to as The Boy King I suppose the typo is probably understandable) or, more importantly, responded to Gore's assertion that our invasion of Iraq was "the first Pre-emptive War in U.S. history." Okay, I admit I haven't yet read through this, but "the first...in U.S. history"?? US invasions of (formerly) sovereign nations everywhere from Hawai'i to Puerto Rico to Panama to Greneda to name-that-country suddenly don't count? Or are they not as important in terms of making Gore's point because they weren't announced beforehand (although I'm not even sure that's the case) or given big buildups on 24-hour cable news stations (which didn't exist then)? Just asking.
*Update: Okay, Mark A.R. Kleiman did too... :)