So this is the day.  Every career has an end, that moment when the past becomes the past and there is truly no going back.  Today is that day for former Vice President Al Gore.  VP Gore has in the few years since losing the 2000 election said a number of whoppers and shown more than a hint of unbalanced anger and vitriol.  But while those things were extreme they were sadly also not unprecedented or even uncommon in our current strained political discourse.  Until today.  Today our former Vice President showed why he is unsuited to ever hold office, any office whatsoever, again.  Here are his comments said to a mostly Saudi audience in Saudi Arabia:

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia - Former Vice President Al Gore told a mainly Saudi audience on Sunday that the U.S. government committed "terrible abuses" against Arabs after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and that most Americans did not support such treatment.

Gore said Arabs had been "indiscriminately rounded up" and held in "unforgivable" conditions. The former vice president said the Bush administration was playing into al-Qaida’s hands by routinely blocking Saudi visa applications.

"The thoughtless way in which visas are now handled, that is a mistake," Gore said during the Jiddah Economic Forum. "The worst thing we can possibly do is to cut off the channels of friendship and mutual understanding between Saudi Arabia and the United States."

Gore told the largely Saudi audience, many of them educated at U.S. universities, that Arabs in the United States had been "indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges of overstaying a visa or not having a green card in proper order, and held in conditions that were just unforgivable."

"Unfortunately there have been terrible abuses and it’s wrong," Gore said. "I do want you to know that it does not represent the desires or wishes or feelings of the majority of the citizens of my country."

I have trouble finding the words to describe my feelings after hearing these words from him, and knowing who he was telling them directly to.  There is no basis for these charges, and tellingly he mentioned none.  This is demogogy of the absolutely worst sort.  Especially outrageous is his insinuation that the new more strict visa policy is somehow a miscarriage of justice, when the polar opposite and truth of the matter is that it was his administration’s visa policy that left the US breathtakingly unprotected from jihadists entering our nation and contributed to the attack on 9/11.  Not tightening that failed visa program that handed out visas to any Saudi that wanted one by third parties not even employed by our government and with no oversight would be an outrageous failure of our leader’s duty to protect the nation.

These words can not be taken back.  The utter lack of judgement they show are the last word on any hope Gore had of being elected to some other high office as long as national security remains of concern to the American public.  Al Gore just completed his transformation into an irrelevant kook.

Update:  Head on over to Michelle Malkin for the roundup of other discussion on Gore’s comments.