| Author | Message | | Guest | | Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2003 7:02 am Post subject: Gore Vidal claims 'Bush junta' complicit in 9/11 |
| Americans are against unilateral war in Iraq:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/01/15/americans-are-against-unilateral-war-in-iraq.php
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,819931,00.html
Gore Vidal claims 'Bush junta' complicit in 9/11
America's most controversial novelist calls for an investigation into whether the Bush administration deliberately allowed the terrorist attacks to happen
Talk: Gore Vidal on Bush
Observer Worldview
Terrorism crisis: Observer special
Sunder Katwala
Sunday October 27, 2002
America's most controversial writer Gore Vidal has launched the most scathing attack to date on George W Bush's Presidency, calling for an investigation into the events of 9/11 to discover whether the Bush administration deliberately chose not to act on warnings of Al-Qaeda's plans.Vidal's highly controversial 7000 word polemic titled 'The Enemy Within' - published in the print edition of The Observer today - argues that what he calls a 'Bush junta' used the terrorist attacks as a pretext to enact a pre-existing agenda to invade Afghanistan and crack down on civil liberties at home.Vidal writes: 'We still don't know by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday, or for what true purpose. But it is fairly plain to many civil libertarians that 9/11 put paid not only to much of our fragile Bill of Rights but also to our once-envied system of government which had taken a mortal blow the previous year when the Supreme Court did a little dance in 5/4 time and replaced a popularly elected President with the oil and gas Bush-Cheney junta.'Vidal argues that the real motive for the Afghanistan war was to control the gateway to Eurasia and Central Asia's energy riches. He quotes extensively from a 1997 analysis of the region by Zgibniew Brzezinski, formerly national security adviser to President Carter, in support of this theory. But, Vidal argues, US administrations, both Democrat and Republican, were aware that the American public would resist any war in Afghanistan without a truly massive and widely perceived external threat. 'Osama was chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the frightening logo for our long-contemplated invasion and conquest of Afghanistan ... [because] the administration is convinced that Americans are so simple-minded that they can deal with no scenario more complex than the venerable, lone, crazed killer (this time with zombie helpers) who does evil just for the fun of it 'cause he hates us because we're rich 'n free 'n he's not.' Vidal also attacks the American media's failure to discuss 11 September and its consequences: 'Apparently, "conspiracy stuff" is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.''It is an article of faith that there are no conspiracies in American life. Yet, a year or so ago, who would have thought that most of corporate America had been conspiring with accountants to cook their books since - well, at least the bright dawn of the era of Reagan and deregulation.'At the heart of the essay are questions about the events of 9/11 itself and the two hours after the planes were hijacked. Vidal writes that 'astonished military experts cannot fathom why the government's "automatic standard order of procedure in the event of a hijacking" was not followed'. These procedures, says Vidal, determine that fighter planes should automatically be sent aloft as soon as a plane has deviated from its flight plan. Presidential authority is not required until a plane is to be shot down. But, on 11 September, no decision to start launching planes was taken until 9.40am, eighty minutes after air controllers first knew that Flight 11 had been hijacked and fifty minutes after the first plane had struck the North Tower.'By law, the fighters should have been up at around 8.15. If they had, all the hijacked planes might have been diverted and shot down.'Vidal asks why Bush, as Commander-in-Chief, stayed in a Florida classroom as news of the attacks broke: 'The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.' He also attacks the 'nonchalance' of General Richard B Myers, acting Joint Chief of Staff, in failing to respond until the planes had crashed into the twin towers.Asking whether these failures to act expeditiously were down to conspiracy, coincidence or error, Vidal notes that incompetence would usually lead to reprimands for those responsible, writing that 'It is interesting how often in our history, when disaster strikes, incompetence is considered a better alibi than .... Well, yes, there are worse things.'Vidal draws comparisons with another 'day of infamy' in American history, writing that 'The truth about Pearl Harbour is obscured to this day. But it has been much studied. 11 September, it is plain, is never going to be investigated if Bush has anything to say about it.' He quotes CNN reports that Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to limit Congressional investigation of the day itself, ostensibly on grounds of not diverting resources from the anti-terror campaign.Vidal calls bin Laden an 'Islamic zealot' and 'evil doer' but argues that 'war' cannot be waged on the abstraction of 'terrorism'. He says that 'Every nation knows how - if it has the means and will - to protect itself from thugs of the sort that brought us 9/11 ... You put a price on their heads and hunt them down. In recent years, Italy has been doing that with the Sicilian Mafia; and no-one has suggested bombing Palermo.'Vidal also highlights the role of American and Pakistani intelligence in creating the fundamentalist terrorist threat: 'Apparently, Pakistan did do it - or some of it' but with American support. "From 1979, the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA was launched in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan ... the CIA covertly trained and sponsored these warriors.'Vidal also quotes the highly respected defence journal Jane's Defence Weekly on how this support for Islamic fundamentalism continued after the emergence of bin Laden: 'In 1988, with US knowledge, bin Laden created Al-Qaeda (The Base); a conglomerate of quasi-independent Islamic terrorist cells spread across 26 or so countries. Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda.'Vidal, 77, and internationally renowned for his award-winning novels and plays, has long been a ferocious, and often isolated, critic of the Bush administration at home and abroad. He now lives in Italy. In Vidal's most recent book, The Last Empire, he argued that 'Americans have no idea of the extent of their government's mischief ... the number of military strikes we have made unprovoked, against other countries, since 1947 is more than 250.'
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Robert Fisk: Looming War is about OIL:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2003/01/20/robert-fisk-looming-war-is-about-oil.php | |  | | Alpha | | | | Guest | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2003 10:23 pm Post subject: Gore Vidal was Excellent on "Hardball" Last Night |
| http://www.msnbc.com/news/862215.asp
‘Hardball’ for Jan. 20
Read the complete transcript to Monday’s show
Guests: Joe Scarborough, Pat Caddell, Susan Molinari, Gore Vidal, Frank Luntz, Howard Fineman
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: I’m Chris Matthews. Let’s play HARDBALL. The big story tonight, is exile for Saddam Hussein a way to avoid war with Iraq? After Arab leaders first floated the idea (ph), here’s what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Last choice. I would be delighted if Saddam Hussein threw in the towel, said the game’s up, the international community has caught me, and I’ll just leave.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MATTHEWS: Joe Scarborough is a former Republican congressman from Florida. Pat Caddell is a former Democratic pollster. Susan Molinari is a former Republican congresswoman from New York and Gore Vidal is author of the book, “Dreaming War”.
Let’s go first to Joe Scarborough. Do you think this is an idea that has legs within the administration that he would either be overthrown by his generals at the behest of the Saudis or the fact Saddam Hussein would go into exile under pressure?
JOE SCARBOROUGH ®, FMR. U.S CONGRESSMAN: Well I think if it does have legs, they’re dreaming. Saddam Hussein is not going to leave. The generals aren’t going to overthrow him. I think in the end, you know, any generals participated, it’ll be kind of like the Trent Lott episode on Capitol Hill.
There may be 20 generals that shoot Saddam Hussein in the back as the tanks get into Baghdad, but he’s not going anywhere. I mean it’s going to be a war that’s going to move Saddam Hussein from power or he’ll be there until George W. Bush is out of office.
MATTHEWS: Let’s go to Pat Caddell. Do you think this is a credible solution to the problem of war?
PAT CADDELL, FMR. DEMOCRATIC POLLSTER: This is a man-well, if he would leave, it would be wonderful because I think we’re in a disastrous course now, but I’ll tell you, this is a man who is known-one of the great stories when he took power and someone disagreed with him, his Cabinet, it was a general, took him in another room, and shot him in the head, and walked back in and conducted the meeting. That’s the way he does business himself. The generals believe nobody is going to dare-take him on. I mean this man is protecting himself-he’s already killed the people who have that kind of nerve, as Joe said, until the tanks are there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don’t know...
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This isn’t going to go anywhere...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Susan Molinari, is this a credible alternative, Susan, right now, that Saddam Hussein could be offered amnesty, his generals offered amnesty to get him out or he’s offered amnesty to get out himself? Is it credible?
SUSAN MOLINARI, FMR. REPUBLICAN CONGRESSWOMAN: Well right now it doesn’t appear credible. Historically it doesn’t appear credible, and of course the question is even if all that were to work, and he were to leave, who would take his place? Someone the United States who want to take his place or somebody that Saudi Arabia and Egypt and others in Arab countries that would have to be a part of this would want to take their place, in which case, can we really afford to have another problem in Iraq? As Americans we cannot from a political standpoint; Bush 43 certainly cannot.
MATTHEWS: Wait a minute, Susan. You mean you’re tougher, you’re more hawkish than Rummy, than Rumsfeld?
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: He says he would accept the deal. You say you wouldn’t.
MOLINARI: I have a different level of responsibility after I answer the questions than Secretary Rumsfeld has. I think the question has to be asked and I’m sure he’s asking himself who and what is in place to put the next leader there, and could we make sure that they would become allies to the United States for at least the next decade? That’s a very difficult question...
MATTHEWS: Well, if you’re thinking that...
MOLINARI: ... for anybody to answer.
MATTHEWS: ... and Susan, that’s not what he’s saying, though. He very clearly stated this weekend that he would accept such a deal, no conditions, no caveats. He just wants the guy and his merry band out of the country.
MOLINARI: Well, I don’t know that...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: ... that is the deal.
MOLINARI: I don’t know that I heard him say no conditions or no caveats and I guess maybe me in my old cynical Washington mind, I’m thinking that he knows darn well that this is not something that’s going to happen, but clearly, if he stood up and said would we under any circumstances accept regime change, of course, there’d be international uproar at the U.N., and we would be diverted from pursuing a real course of action. This isn’t going to happen...
MATTHEWS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Susan, you and I have watched this guy 100 years. All he would have to say is I’m not going to speculate on what we’re going to do after he does it. If he leaves the country, we’ll deal with the matter when it comes. Instead, this time, Rumsfeld, the most hawkish guy in the administration said if this guy leaves, the deal is off.
Gore Vidal, sir, let me ask you this. Would you trust Rumsfeld if he made a deal like that with you and you were Saddam Hussein?
GORE VIDAL, AUTHOR, “DREAMING WAR”: No, under no circumstances. This administration always acts in bad faith. It’s just one of the rules of the gas and oil business, which they know best.
MOLINARI: How does one act...
(CROSSTALK)
MOLINARI: ... against a military dictator?
(CROSSTALK)
CADDELL: Chris, this is-they’re achieving what Rumsfeld wants to achieve. We’ve just now spent five or six minutes talking about something I think is absolutely unlikely to happen in the real world-you know, it’d be great if it did-instead of debating the really core issues now of where we are in this thing and...
MATTHEWS: Well what would you say would be more of a core issue than whether we go to war or not right now?
CADDELL: No, that’s what I’m saying, but we’re not debating the war.
We’re debating on this option, well maybe the generals will take him out or
whatever. We’ve got-you know we’ve got thousands of troops leaving-
another 6,000 left California yesterday. We have thousands of troops
going, and I thought we were originally in a war against terrorism, and I -
you know, we have 350,000 people in the Gulf, I would like for them to send some of them to Afghanistan and these other places and get al Qaeda.
They’re the people who took out the buildings. And I’d like to-you know and if bin Laden is alive, I’d like to get him. We didn’t commit the troops, but we’re doing it on this project, and at a time when the American people are moving off of this. You’ve got-”TIME” Magazine reported this week a third of the senior military officers are very concerned about this kind of preemptive strike against Iraq.
You’ve got an analysis done yesterday in the “L.A. Times”, poll, their pole and the Pugh poll shows that World War II veterans are basically that generation is one group of people who are against this because they don’t see the proof. And that’s the American people saying you better have the proof or you better have the United Nations, this idea of Mr. Rumsfeld that he’s going to have war no matter what isn’t going to work. And I’ll just add one thing. “The Wall Street Journal” Thursday said that they were planning on how to deal with the oil situation when we take over, and one of the two firms that they were considering giving the franchise to was Halliburton. You’ve got a whole world...
MATTHEWS: Let me ask Joe Scarborough...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: ... Congressman...
CADDELL: Oil.
MATTHEWS: Congressman, I’ve got to ask you...
CADDELL: Incredible.
MATTHEWS: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) question, I think there’s a big downside strategically to what Secretary Rumsfeld said over the weekend. If he’s saying all we want to do is get rid of this guy we don’t like, we are in a position of saying this war can it be avoided if we get rid of a guy we don’t like and find weapons we can’t find. Doesn’t it seem to narrow the mission that all it has to do with changing the face of the guy on the postage stamp from Iraq? I mean, isn’t that a narrow reason for war just to get rid of one guy?
SCARBOROUGH: Well I mean...
MATTHEWS: I would assassinate him if that’s all we’re doing.
SCARBOROUGH: Well, if they could assassinate him, they would assassinate him. I mean I agree with Susan, this doesn’t cost the Bush administration anything. They can send Rumsfeld out there and say, yes, you know, if he wants to leave, if he wants to go to London or Paris, we’ll let him go. We really don’t care. We’ll call this whole thing off.
They know he’s not going to leave. He’s going to stay there. The generals aren’t going to overthrow him, and in the end, the only way they’re going to remove Saddam Hussein is by going into Baghdad and physically removing him or killing him.
MATTHEWS: Gore Vidal?
VIDAL: Well...
MATTHEWS: In 1945 the...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Well, let me just ask you a particular historic question.
In 1945, the United States went all the way to Berlin to kill Adolf Hitler. If Adolf Hitler was offered-has a chance to leave in say ’44 or ’43 to go and enjoy his life in some sort of South American country, he may well have taken it. It seems to me to have lowered...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh Chris...
MATTHEWS: ... the stakes to say all we want to do is get rid of the guy.
VIDAL: Well, I think it’s-all of this is theater for the gas and oil business in order to get our hands on Iraqi oil. We’re also aiming for Central Asia, Eurasia, as it’s still known, all of those Uzbekistans and so on. These are the great oil reserves of the world and by 2020, the world will probably have run out of oil as we now know it. What they’re doing is a preemptive strike in order to grab for the United States and specifically for this group of oil and gas people from the Carlisle Group, Halliburton, Harken.
I don’t dare say it’s a conspiracy to go over our government of oil people because we can’t use that word conspiracy, so I just say it’s a coincidence that from Condoleezza Rice to the secretary of the interior, they’re all in the oil and gas business and they have launched a war on a country that has done us no harm, yet they have convinced according to the polls, 50 percent of the American people think that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11. He didn’t. Now, we’re going after-we might just as well be attacking Denmark. They had nothing...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well...
VIDAL: ... to do with it either.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well listen...
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: First of all...
VIDAL: And you have all...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That’s ridiculous.
VIDAL: The media and this administration have worked themselves into
this is surrealism.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me...
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you...
SCARBOROUGH: What is surrealism is the fact that you’re comparing Saddam Hussein...
(CROSSTALK)
SCARBOROUGH: ... to Denmark, and Denmark does not have an advanced biological weapons program that they’re hiding from U.N. weapons inspectors. They do not have...
VIDAL: How do we know that they are...
(CROSSTALK)
SCARBOROUGH: They don’t have...
VIDAL: We don’t know this.
SCARBOROUGH: ... 3,000 — yes, we do know this. The U.N. weapon inspectors know specifically that Iraq has biological and chemical weapons programs and Blix announced earlier today he’s very concerned that they’re not providing the evidence that they claim to destroy this. They never did. It’s just like the 3,000 pages of documents on uranium enrichment programs that they claim they didn’t have that they only found after they knocked down the door of that-of the scientist in Iraq. Now, I...
VIDAL: And they find...
SCARBOROUGH: ... invite you, Mr. Vidal, to go to Denmark and find chemical and biological and nuclear weapons programs in the homes of Denmark scientists. And if you do, please write a book about it because I would love reading that book.
VIDAL: Don’t underestimate...
(CROSSTALK)
VIDAL: ... the ingenuity...
(CROSSTALK)
VIDAL: ... of the forgers (ph) at Langley, Virginia.
MOLINARI: Well first of all...
(CROSSTALK)
SCARBOROUGH: ... aren’t scientists.
MOLINARI: Well and you’re totally ignoring the fact that we are all acting on behalf of the United Nations, who obviously had to have some proof and we’re not totally blind sighted by the conspiracy that you allegedly see in the United States. That is not-it’s an insult to the administration, it’s an insult to voters, frankly, sir, it’s an insult to Americans that you can even carry this fairy tale so far and paint Saddam Hussein...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well Susan...
MOLINARI: ... you know, in the demeanor...
(CROSSTALK)
VIDAL: Are you running for office now, madam?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Susan the problem...
VIDAL: Are you running for office?
MOLINARI: Sir, I had the courage to run for office, and I’m not running for office now, but being a public service, I believe, is a noble form of making a living-no fairy tales...
MATTHEWS: Well both of you...
(CROSSTALK)
VIDAL: Well...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: ... of running for U.S. Congress from New York over the years. Let me ask you, Mr. Vidal, do you believe this is sub conscious or conscious? Do you believe if you had a tape recording of all the meetings involving Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice and the others you mentioned, do you think there would ever be a time in that meeting where you would hear them say we’re doing this to grab the Crimea, we’re doing this to grab the Black Sea oil. Would they ever admit it?
VIDAL: Why not? I’ll tell you who admitted it and wrote it...
(CROSSTALK)
VIDAL: ... and this is the blueprint-listen, this is the blueprint they’re acting from, it was done by Brzezinski, who was national security advisor to President Carter. In foreign affairs about six or seven years ago he said the last great oil reserves are Eurasia, and this is the last great redoubt...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
VIDAL: ... of the world’s energy...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: ... thank...
VIDAL: ... and we must...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: ... for joining (UNINTELLIGIBLE) your new book, sir, it’s called “Dreaming Wars”. Thank you very much for joining us. Everybody else is coming back. | | | | Guest | | Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2003 10:32 pm Post subject: |
| Info from the Gore Vidal Intelligence Service? Mister Informed? Mister Inside?
Hmmmm. Was that Gore.....? | | | | Alpha | | | | Guest | | Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2003 10:50 pm Post subject: Re: Zionist planned Iraq 'regime change' before Bush Preside |
| | Alpha wrote: | | http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/31/bush-planned-iraq-regime-change-before-becoming-president.php |
Well, Saddam's violations have been going on for about 12 years now. I would HOPE somebody was making plans. | | | | Alpha | | | | Guest | | Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2003 11:00 pm Post subject: |
| | Shotgun approach. Interesting tact. But just your same old stuff, isn't it? | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2003 11:00 pm Post subject: Re: Zionist planned Iraq 'regime change' before Bush Preside |
| | Anonymous wrote: | | Alpha wrote: | | http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/31/bush-planned-iraq-regime-change-before-becoming-president.php |
Well, Saddam's violations have been going on for about 12 years now. I would HOPE somebody was making plans. |
And the rogue state of Israel's violations have been going on for decades:
US/UN Double Standard When It Comes to Israeli Weapons of Mass Destruction:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/09/15/us-un-double-standard-when-it-comes-to-israel.php | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
