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Comment by nikcub | Hacker News Reader

This really shouldn't need to be pointed out: but the difference is that none of these people have been appointed to the board of any tech company.

In 10 years time if Facebook put James Clapper or Eric Holder on their board it'd likely be more controversial.

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Are you serious? Al Gore is on various boards, including Apple. He also supported the war. Will you stop using Apple products now? You're not a hypocrite, are you?

Al Gore was appointed to the board of Apple prior to the Iraq war. Here is the Slashdot thread from when he joined, there wasn't much controversial about him at the time other than 'huh, he invented the internet':

http://apple-beta.slashdot.org/story/03/03/19/2246212/al-gor...

He wasn't in congress during the Iraq war vote.

There is a very wide bridge between having a personal opinion as a private citizen in agreeing with the war (as Gore did) and being part of a group of people who planned, orchestrated, operated & implemented two unjust and likely illegal wars.

fwiw, I don't like many of them and don't understand the whole red/blue R/D thing you guys have going on - they all seem very similar from where i'm sitting.

This matters why? Al Gore was on the board after the war started. He made his support for the war clear after his appointment and after the war had started. He wasn't in Congress, but Condeleeza wasn't in Congress too. She had as many votes as Al Gore did for the Iraq war. Why is Al Gore excused but Condeleeza not?

National Security Advisor presumably (hopefully!) has better access to information and internal assessments of the quality of various intelligence sources than does "random ex- politician".

Completely ignoring the point that Al Gore wasn't a public official at the time, let's not forget that congress was lied to just as much as the rest of the public.

The Factcheck link http://archive.is/vAWQa completely disproves your claim. Are they lying too?

That fact check shows that he didn't lie during the State of the Union address, not that the pretense for the war wasn't a lie. Certainly, it says nothing about the fact we went to war with Iraq for an attack they had nothing to do with.

And Condoleeze Rice is not a "public official" now, either

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