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Originally Posted by transplant99
I do know that Al Gore has lied in the past, you know inventing the internet and what not, so I dont think it is unreasonable to want to scrutinize what he says...or is it only the left that can do that to the right? I get so confused on that rule.
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Actually, Al Gore's statement that he (and the committee he was working on) invented the internet was actually accurate. The quote was butchered and the story manufactured by FoxNews to smear Gore, but the original context was indeed correct. Gore made his comments in an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. Here's a snippet from the transcript:
CNN'S WOLF BLITZER: I want to get to some of the substance of domestic and international issues in a minute, but let's just wrap up a little bit of the politics right now.
Why should Democrats, looking at the Democratic nomination process, support you instead of Bill Bradley, a friend of yours, a former colleague in the Senate? What do you have to bring to this that he doesn't necessarily bring to this process?
AL GORE: Well, I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be.
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.
During a quarter century of public service, including most of it long before I came into my current job, I have worked to try to improve the quality of life in our country and in our world. And what I've seen during that experience is an emerging future that's very exciting, about which I'm very optimistic, and toward which I want to lead.
According to Microsoft's very own reference resource, BOOKSHELF '96, Al Gore did pretty much invent the internet. We might assume that Microsoft would have a pretty good handle on that particular issue and would know what they're/it's talking about. Here's an excerpt from an article entitled, "The Internet: How did it originate?"
"In 1991, Vice President Al Gore, then a U.S. senator, proposed widening the architecture of NSFNET to include more K-12 schools, community colleges, and 2-year colleges. The resulting legislation expanded NSFNET and renamed it NREN (National Research and Educational Network). This bill also allowed businesses to purchase part of the network for commercial uses. The mass commercialization of today's Internet is the direct result of this legislation."
To those who have worked in this segment of the IT industry for any length of time we know the history to the development of this medium and the impact the growth and development of what we presently know as the web. Gore put things into basic terms that most people could understand, and did not lie.