[teal]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
What Gore said: (click the quote to read the entire interview with Blitzer)
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

The whole paragraph is...

But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the Last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

So its clear from context (i.e. the next senctence where he continues to use the word initiative but now you can see that he means initiative in the sense of introducing legislation) that he means that he took the initiave in introducing *legislation* and *funding* for helping to build (i.e. another sense of the word *create*) the internet and did not claim to have invented the internet single handedly which is what the quote taken out of context implies. Admittedly I do not know if he did introduce such legislation and/or take an important roll in moving it forward, but I am willing to bet that he did.

Thanks for including the reference to the whole quote. Its quite easy to discuss these things that way. The "story" of the 2000 elections was that Gore was a liar and a bore and Bush was stupid. Niether are true. I actually think that Gore being a bore cost him more votes than the liar thing and anyone can tell you that stupidity is not a factor in American politics so I don't think that cost Bush any votes at all.

Cheers!

Teal