Author takes controversial look at Bush's motives for going to war
I found this very interesting article(interview) which will back up many of the TA's opinions that discuss on this board, and anotehr view, look on the why WAR.. Read on, I thought it was very interesting.
| quote: | WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Author Gore Vidal takes aim at the Bush administration and questions the motives behind the war on terror in his new book, "Dreaming War: Blood For Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta." Is corporate greed the overriding factor behind wanting to go to war with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein or is it the threat he poses to national security?
Vidal joined hosts Tucker Carlson and James Carville on Tuesday to defend his controversial positions.
CARLSON: Now, Mr. Vidal, you make a number of pretty serious charges in this book, but here's one from page 17. I want to read it to you. You write, "The unlovely Osama was chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the frightening logo for our long contemplated invasion and conquest of Afghanistan, planning for which had been 'contingency' some years before 9/11."
The implication is that Osama bin Laden was some sort of patsy, a Richard Jewell figure, sort of chosen. Do you believe that?
VIDAL: Well, that's not what I'm saying.
CARLSON: What are you saying?
VIDAL: I don't propose a remedial reading course for you, but the sentence is quite the contrary.
CARLSON: Look, you seem to be saying that ...
VIDAL: Osama bin Laden did what he did.
CARLSON: What did he do?
VIDAL: Well, what did Bush do? There had been a contingency plan of the Clinton administration and Sandy Berger, who was the national security adviser, actually handed to Condoleezza Rice -- who took his place in the new administration of George W. Bush -- their plans for an October strike at Afghanistan.
There was an opportunity for us to prepare. It wasn't taken. Osama bin Laden was then used to excite everybody. I'm not quite sure, but I agree with everybody else that he was certainly responsible for 9/11.
But talking about lying and, by the way, The New York Times, the newspaper I cannot stand, had today a wonderful column by a guy called Crudman listing some 40 lies that Bush has told us recently.
CARLSON: Wait, wait, Mr. Vidal, before you go on ...
VIDAL: Let me complete my thought.
CARLSON: Can you just answer my question, though?
VIDAL: You don't have a question ...
CARLSON: Here it is. Was Osama bin Laden responsible for attacking the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? You imply...
VIDAL: Yes, of course, he was, but he was then used, first of all to excite the American people. We were going to go after them. We were going to go after Afghanistan. We were going to kill off the Taliban. We were going to kill off al Qaeda.
Then suddenly in the middle of it comes the biggest lie of all, we're after Iraq. And we pretend that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11, which he did not. That is the point to this discourse, not that he is used as a logo. That is irony. Sometimes I think it should be printed in blue.
CARVILLE: Well, if somebody who actually did need a remedial course and I haven't taken any of them, I need another remedial course here. I want to get to the crux of what you are saying here. In Afghanistan, and we'll move to Iraq, there's no oil in Afghanistan, is there?
VIDAL: No, but ... Unocal, Union Oil of California, had a contract when the Taliban were governing there, and we had put them there originally to fight the Russians. They then went crazy on us and it was impossible for Unocal to build a pipeline to get the Caspian oil out of all those little countries that end in the word "stan" -- Uzbekistan and so on.
Afghanistan was necessary to have a pipeline that would take that oil from the Caspian Sea down to Afghanistan, through Pakistan, to the Port of Karachi in the Indian Ocean where it would be loaded aboard Chinese ships, as they are hungry for oil, and that was the deal.
The deal was screwed up by the Taliban who went crazy. ... Then Osama bin Laden enters the scene, providing us with a perfect pretext for going into Afghanistan, which the previous administration, and you can blame this on Clinton if you like, had been planning to do.
Now that's at play. It's all about oil. It's all about money. It's about energy. So one thing, if I may make a suggestion to Tucker. ... Don't personalize everything. One of the reasons that television is so dreadful and unwatchable by anybody with an IQ slightly above room temperature, except as a sport like this in which you get a lot of people shouting, everything is personalities. ...
CARLSON: I simply want to read you a quote from your book. Here it is, the government, on page 186, you say, "plays off Americans' relative innocence, or ignorance to be more precise. This is probably why geography has not really been taught since World War II -- to keep people in the dark as to where we are blowing things up. Because Enron wants to blow them up. Or Unocal, the great pipeline company, wants a war going some place."
Now, that's what you wrote. You're implying there's a conspiracy that extends even to the classroom where children are not taught geography. That's what you say. That seems ludicrous to me.
VIDAL: Well, it would, but I think you've got to take into account that the people who do the educating are also the people who steal money from us like Enron [and] like this administration. They don't want an informed people. If we had ...
CARLSON: How does Enron control the schools?
VIDAL: How does Enron control the schools? It siphons up so much money for itself as does the war machine that it's in collusion with.
... I go back to 1950, to Harry Truman and the origins of the Cold War, when the country was militarized and we never got it back. ... I wrote a little book called "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace."
We had been at war for 50 years and we had no proper enemy anywhere unless it was the Soviet Union, and we never went to war with them. But one month it's Panama and Noriega. The next month it's Gadhafi. It's the Enemy of the Month Club. |
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Upcoming:
Michael Andrews Feat. Gary Jules - Mad World (Grayed Out Mix)
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That's a great theory ... I like the one after that even better, Enron is "siphoning" off money from schools to keep people dumb so they can better steal our money. And the whole oil pipeline thing in Afghanistan is preposterous. Simply because a pipeline deal fell through in Afghanistan you can't simply conclude from that fact ALONE that there was a government conspiracy. You're grasping at straws. There are business dealings ALL ACROSS THE WORLD that fall through. You seriously think that with every failed business dealing the CEO goes to the pentagon and asks a general to come up with a plan of action??? Don't you think it would be far easier to simply GO AROUND the country instead of conspiring to invade it? Even IF we invaded afghanistan to set up one stupid pipeline for one company the COST of the invasion and occupation would be more than the pipeline! 
; I just wanted to save you some time from reading the book. However I am glad you're already in the know about my fellow beantownie, check out his "I Phantom" LP 
