On 31 May 2005 07:05:48 -0700, "Sport Pilot"
wrote:

Gore said he "took the inititive to invent the internet". Which means
he claimed he invented the internet. Thing is he was confused about
exactly what he did take initive on. Not only was he dishonest, he was
stupid, he never was able to explain what he was talking about.

"Snopes.com" explains it best:

Claim: Vice-President Al Gore claimed that he "invented" the
Internet.

Status: False.

Origins: Despite the derisive references that continue even today,
Al Gore did not claim he "invented" the Internet, nor did he say
anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The "Al Gore
said he 'invented' the Internet" put-downs were misleading,
out-of-context distortions of something he said during an interview
with Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "Late Edition" program on 9 March 1999.
When asked to describe what distinguished him from his challenger for
the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Bill Bradley of New
Jersey, Gore replied (in part):
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.

Clearly, although Gore's phrasing was clumsy (and perhaps
self-serving), he was not claiming that he "invented" the Internet (in
the sense of having designed or implemented it), but that he was
responsible, in an economic and legislative sense, for fostering the
development the I also invented the microphone technology that we now
know as the Internet. To claim that Gore was seriously trying to take
credit for the "invention" of the Internet is, frankly, just silly
political posturing that arose out of a close presidential campaign.
Gore never used the word "invent," and the words "create" and "invent"
have distinctly different meanings — the former is used in the sense
of "to bring about" or "to bring into existence" while the latter is
generally used to signify the first instance of someone's thinking up
or implementing an idea. (To those who say the words "create" and
"invent" mean exactly the same thing, we have to ask why, then, the
media overwhelmingly and consistently cited Gore as having claimed he
"invented" the Internet, even though he never used that word, and
transcripts of what he actually said were readily available.)

If President Eisenhower had said in the mid-1960s that he, while
President, "created" the Interstate Highway System, we would not have
seen dozens and dozens of editorials lampooning him for claiming he
"invented" the concept of highways or implying that he personally went
out and dug ditches across the country to help build the roadway.
Everyone would have understood that Ike meant he was a driving force
behind the legislation that created the highway system, and this was
the very same concept Al Gore was expressing about himself with his
Internet statement.

Again, thanks to Snopes.com for the above comment.

Corky Scott