At home, Gore said, the Bush administration resisted the call to create a special office for domestic security. And, he charged, the White House has used the war on terrorism as a pretext for compromising constitutional rights. Noting that U.S. citizens have been swept up in the anti-terrorist dragnet and then detained for weeks without formal charges, he said: "That this can be done on the say-so of the president of the United States or those acting in his name is beyond the pale and un-American."

He slammed the Bush administration for failing to bring stability to Afghanistan after routing the Taliban. "Incredibly ... despite pledges from President Bush that we would never again abandon Afghanistan, we have done precisely that," Gore charged. The failure to bring in an international force of 30,000 to 35,000 troops means that the new government does not even control all of Kabul, he said, and has left the countryside in the hands of warlords.

Aware of the backlash that could follow his criticism against the wartime president, Gore repeatedly stressed that Hussein is a threat and that the U.S. is justified in seeking regime change. But, he said, Bush has yet to prove that Iraq presents an immediate threat to the United States or its interests. Therefore, he said, the U.S. should work to defeat al-Qaida and, at the same time, should be building a global coalition to take on Saddam "in a timely manner."

Conditions in the Middle East are more difficult for the U.S. now than they were on the eve of the Gulf War in 1991, Gore said. At the time, as a U.S. senator from Tennessee, he broke with most fellow Democrats to support that war. In that case, he said, action was clearly justified because Iraq had invaded Kuwait. The first President Bush "patiently and skillfully" built a global coalition, he said, with many Arab nations and other countries providing troops and funds for the effort. The U.N. had passed a strong resolution against Saddam. Only then -- and after the 1990 midterm elections -- did the invasion begin.

But the younger Bush is ignoring much of that wisdom and pursuing a more divisive course, Gore said. If the U.S. follows the vision of hawks allied with Bush, the debate will be played out in the charged atmosphere of an election, with hundreds of billions of dollars in costs borne largely by U.S. taxpayers and world anger almost a certainty.

Further, Gore said, the difficulty of nation-building in Afghanistan augurs grave problems that might follow if the U.S. invades Iraq. If central authority collapses in post-Saddam Iraq as it has in Afghanistan, he said, terrorists could slip across porous borders and perhaps obtain weapons of mass destruction now closely held by Saddam's forces.

Bush last week sent a sweeping resolution to Congress, seeking unlimited authority to use military force or other measures against Iraq. Some analysts have suggested that the wording of the measure would allow military action against other countries as well, with or without the blessing of the United Nations.

Gore agreed that that resolution is "much too broad," and he urged Congress to "severely" narrow its scope. Instead, Gore proposed, Congress should urge Bush to work with the U.N. Security Council to seek Saddam's compliance and to assemble "the broadest possible international support."

Gore's speech was repeatedly interrupted by applause and cheering, and at one point the former vice president quipped that he was glad to be back in California, a state that supported the administration of former President Bill Clinton even in difficult times. In a question-and-answer session after the speech, Gore was asked whether he had decided to seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2004, but he said he would make that decision in December.

And as he left the Fairmont Hotel auditorium pursued by reporters, one asked whether he might pay a political cost for his strong comments about Bush. "I'm going to say what I think is right," he said. "I'm going to do what I think is right."

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