- LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. author
Gore Vidal denounced President Bush Tuesday as wanting the war on terror
to go on forever and said some Americans were delighted that the September
11 attacks had singled out Muslims as the enemy.
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- Remembering the attacks and the suffering they brought
had become something of a "new religion" for Americans, the outspoken
writer said in an interview broadcast on the BBC World Service.
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- "First of all this is the anniversary of what is
becoming more like a new religion than anything else in the United States,"
Vidal, one of contemporary America's most prolific writers and harshest
critics, told the "East Asia Today" program.
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- "Some people in the United States were rather delighted
that it (the attacks) mobilized the entire country and focused on a single
enemy, which we'd been demonizing for quite some time -- the Muslim world,"
Vidal said.
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- "He (Bush) wants this to go on forever. He said
to Congress after 9/11: 'It's going to be a long war'. He was thrilled."
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- Bush launched a global anti-terror campaign after four
commercial planes were hijacked on September 11, 2001, and flown into New
York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon outside Washington and a field
in Pennsylvania, killing more than 3,000 people.
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- The war began in Afghanistan, where a U.S.-led coalition
toppled the Taliban government, which Washington said harbored militants
blamed for the attacks. The Bush administration is now considering military
action against Iraq, which it says is trying to acquire weapons of mass
destruction.
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- Vidal, 76, whose historical novels included the best-selling
"Burr" and "Lincoln," regularly shocks the U.S. establishment
with his controversial comments on politics and social issues.
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- He was in the news in early 2001 for his criticism of
the U.S. investigation of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and his correspondence
with convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh before his execution in June of
that year. He was in the news again after September 11, criticizing the
Bush administration over its response to the attacks.
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- In the BBC interview, to be broadcast Tuesday at 1400
GMT, Vidal also accused the U.S. government and media of misleading the
public about the reasons for the attacks.
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- "America is a quarter of a billion people totally
misinformed and disinformed by their government," he said. "This
is tragic but our media is -- I wouldn't even say corrupt -- it's just
beyond telling us anything that the government doesn't want us to know."
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