Al Gore is criticizing the impending war with Iraq.
The NYT argues that Gore's address:
...suggested a shift in positioning by Mr. Gore, who has for 10 years portrayed himself as a moderate, particularly when it comes to issues of foreign policy, and repeatedly invoked his 1991 vote on the gulf war resolution as a way of distinguishing himself from the rest of his party.
Many people are too stubborn to learn from their mistakes, but Gore is exceptional: he refuses to learn from his correct decisions!
In response to Mr. Gore's speech, VodkaPundit has an open letter to Gore that must be read in its entirety. Also, Andrew Sullivan points out:
As to the coalition argument, Gore, of course, spent eight years assembling a wonderful international coalition on Iraq, which agreed enthusiastically to do nothing effective at all. Now he wants us to wait even further, claiming that the administration has abandoned Afghanistan, while vast sums of U.S. money are being expended on rebuilding the country. And then he reiterates the bizarre notion that undermining one of the chief sponsors of terrorism in the world will somehow hurt the war against terrorism. Huh?
More damningly, Sullivan and Henry Hanks both point out that seven months ago, Gore was calling for a "final reckoning with Iraq."

Meanwhile, Jason Rylander has been looking for Democrats to make good arguments against the war, and recently praised this op-ed by Democratic congressional candidate Hank Perritt. Mr. Perritt deserves credit for stating his views with such forthrightness (unlike most of the rest of his party) and enabling voters to consider such information in making their choice. Regardless of party affiliation, any candidate deserves credit for submitting to the accountability of the voters. Personally, I wouldn't vote for Hillary R. Clinton if my flesh was being flayed with metal combs (sorry, the Yom Kippur liturgy is still on my mind) but she deserves credit for putting herself on the electoral line, while eminences such as Colin Powell prefer to cling to a reputation of eminence from unelected positions via leaks to sympathetic journalists.
However, Mr. Perritt's bravery and integrity does not make his arguments any smarter.
He has a summary list of reasons for oppposing the war, each of which deserve consideration:
[N]o justification exists; an attack would cause a reaction that would threaten Israel's existence; it would undermine America's ability to lead international opinion; it would violate international law; it could mire the United States in a nasty, prolonged conflict; it would profoundly destabilize international relations to the detriment of U.S. interests because it would stimulate a rush to develop weapons of mass destruction to deter future U.S. action.
In turn:
1) [N]o justification exists;
The editors who published Mr. Perritt's piece do not agree:
Two decades ago, having consolidated his Iraqi dictatorship with blood baths and traded billions of petrodollars for modern weapons, Saddam Hussein set out to make himself master of the Middle East and its oil fields. He launched successive wars of aggression against Iran and Kuwait, amassed a large arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and raced to acquire nuclear arms. On his orders, his army committed some of the most horrific war crimes since World War II, gassing whole villages and massacring tens of thousands of innocent civilians at a time. Even after his crushing defeat in the Persian Gulf War, the dictator refused to give up his ambitions. He boldly preserved and even sought to expand his chemical and biological arsenal in defiance of numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions; even as his own people starved, he proudly awarded stipends to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. President Bush's assertion that the Iraqi regime remains a deadly menace to the region and a challenge to international order is not new; President Clinton made the same claim throughout his eight years in office, and the Security Council repeatedly agreed with him. Nor is Mr. Bush's insistence on ending Saddam Hussein's dictatorship a leap; Congress passed a law four years ago endorsing regime change as U.S. policy. For years the central question facing both the United States and the United Nations has been whether they are prepared to follow through on their own decisions.
Mr. Bush's choice to fully confront this challenge has been precipitated by two developments since his election. First came the crumbling of the containment policy that Mr. Clinton relied on to manage the Iraqi threat; then came 9/11. The administration's attempts to explain the implications of these events have been awkward and sometimes confused. It has asserted that Saddam Hussein has connections to the al Qaeda network but has provided no public evidence that this is so. It also has suggested that terrorists could strike the United States with chemical or biological arms supplied by Saddam Hussein; though this is plausible, again there is no evidence that the dictator has adopted such a strategy. The real case for acting now on Iraq is more intangible: It is that the breakdown of containment, and the new flow of resources that breakdown has provided to Saddam Hussein, has decisively raised the cost of postponing a confrontation; and the shock of 9/11 has given this country the lesson that, in an era in which enormous harm can be done by seemingly weak adversaries, threats such as that posed by Iraq must not just be managed but treated aggressively.
Alternatively, the Economist recently editorialized:

The danger Mr Hussein poses cannot be overstated. He is no tinpot despot, singled out for arbitrary American punishment. Nor is Iraq a banana republic. With the possible exception of North Korea, but perhaps not even then, Mr Hussein is the world's most monstrous dictator, who by the promiscuous use of violence has seized unfettered control of a technologically advanced country with vast oil reserves. He has murdered all his political opponents, sometimes squeezing the trigger in person. He has subdued his Kurdish minority by razing their villages and spraying them with poison gas. In 1979 he invaded Iran, thus setting off an eight-year war that squandered more than 1m lives. In 1990 he invaded and annexed Kuwait, pronouncing it his “19th province”. When an American-led coalition started to push him out, and though knowing Israel to be a nuclear power, he fired ballistic missiles into Tel Aviv, in the hope of provoking a general Arab-Israeli conflagration. Next time you hear someone ask why, in a world full of bad men, it is Mr Hussein who is being picked on, please bear all of the above in mind. He may very well be the worst.
And yet it is not simply in his record of aggression, cruelty and recklessness that the peril to the wider world resides. If that were all the story, the danger might be easily contained. The unique danger in Iraq is that this country's advanced technology and potential oil wealth could very soon give this aggressive, cruel and reckless man an atomic bomb.
The unique danger in Iraq is that its advanced technology and potential oil wealth could soon give this aggressive, cruel and reckless man an atomic bomb
How dangerous would that be? To judge by the reaction of Mr Bush's foreign critics, the magnitude of the threat is in the eye of the beholder. But it is not difficult to see why, after September 11th, Americans in particular find it hard to be sanguine about the prospect of a sworn enemy equipping himself with weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In the worst case, these might one day be used against the United States, either directly by Iraq itself or by some non-state group to whom Mr Hussein had transferred his lethal technology. At a minimum, a nuclear-armed Mr Hussein could be counted on to revive his earlier ambitions to intimidate his neighbours and dominate the Gulf. Prophesying is difficult, especially about the past. But if Mr Hussein had already had nuclear weapons when he invaded Kuwait 11 years ago, he might still be there.
Finally, to quote Peter Beinart:
...Saddam is prone to recklessly underestimating America's resolve--which is part of the reason he wasn't deterred from invading Kuwait. ... [W]hile deterrence "worked" vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, there's no guarantee it would have continued to work had the USSR endured for another 50 years. (Even during the cold war, after all, there were some very close calls.) The United States relied on deterrence against the Soviet Union not because deterrence was foolproof but because we had no other choice: We could never have preemptively attacked the USSR; the costs would simply have been too great. But the United States can preemptively attack Iraq. Deterrence is no longer our only option, and it isn't our safest one.

Next is Mr. Perritt's contention that
an attack would cause a reaction that would threaten Israel's existence;
Then why are the Israelis so strongly supportive of the impending attack? They are usually pretty good at judging threats to their existence- after all, they've survived for over 50 years while surrounded by enemies pledged to their destruction.
Also, what about the risks of leaving Saddam in power? Even if it was stipulated that renewed inspections could prevent or substantially delay Saddam's ability to obtain nuclear weapons (which is a pretty big stretch), Saddam has still been underwriting suicide bombers and training terrorists to attack Israel. The UN has not been known for its efficacy (or intentions) at stopping such activities.
Next,
it would undermine America's ability to lead international opinion;
It's amazing what showing conviction on the one hand, while throwing the "dogs of peace" a UN-flavored biscuit on the other, can do to lead international opinion.
Next try:
it would violate international law;
Never mind the innumerable UN resolutions of which Iraq is in defiance. More importantly, in the words of the Economist's editors:
[W]ith all due respect to the Security Council, the legal arguments its members deploy to justify their prior political choices are not especially gripping. The issue here is not Jarndyce v Jarndyce, a quarrel about small print. It is the danger Mr Hussein poses to the world, and whether that danger is big enough to justify the risks of a war.
If you believe that the danger posed by Iraq is truly great enough to justify a war, than international law proscribing such war (assuming it exists, which is a big assumption) is irrelevant. If you believe the danger is not so great, it is unnecessary.
Let's try again:
it could mire the United States in a nasty, prolonged conflict;
It could. On the other hand, this is a country whose troops surrendered wholesale in 1991, and whose military has been much degraded since then. Why is that outcome the likelier one?
If Mr. Perritt is not elected to Congress, he should have an easy time obtaining employment as a writer for the New York Times. All he needs to do is insert the word "quagmire" into the above.
Finally,
it would profoundly destabilize international relations to the detriment of U.S. interests because it would stimulate a rush to develop weapons of mass destruction to deter future U.S. action.
This is the point Perritt spends the most time on. Unfortunately, he again fails to consider the costs of not acting. If Saddam gets nuclear weapons, then that will do far more to incentivize other countries to do so than the U.S. failing to attack now, beacuse: 1) his neighbors will justifiably feel threatened, and 2) he will be able to deter us from interfering with his next plans to control the Persian Gulf, an example which other undesirables will wish to follow. Making an example of Saddam, by contrast, may help deter some other undesirables. Failing to do will provide a massive contrary incentive.

Mr. Rylander: if this is the best the Democrats can do, give it up.