Former US Vice President Al Gore on Wednesday demanded Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials resign for encouraging policies that led to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and fanned hatred of Americans abroad.  

In a highly critical speech lasting more than an hour, Gore labeled the Bush administration's Iraq war plan "incompetent" and called George W. Bush the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon, who resigned the office of the presidency in 1974 following the Watergate scandal.

Gore, who lost the 2000 presidential election to Bush, said Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA director George Tenet should resign.

"We simply cannot afford to increase the risk to our country with more blunders by this team," he told a crowded auditorium at New York University in Manhattan.

"They are endangering the lives of our soldiers and sharply increasing the danger faced by American citizens everywhere in the world, including here at home," Gore said.

He decried the torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison and said the abuse shown in pictures made public in recent weeks was "the natural consequence of the Bush administration policy that has dismantled ... America's checks and balances."

(China Daily via agencies, May 27, 2004)