- America's most controversial novelist calls for an investigation
into whether the Bush administration deliberately allowed the terrorist
attacks to happen...
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.'
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- 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.
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- '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.'
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- '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.'
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- 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'.
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- 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.
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- '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.'
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- 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.
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- 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.'
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- 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.
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- 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.'
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- 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.'
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- 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.'
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- 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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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2002
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