← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Texas Dissident
Thread ID: 3240 | Posts: 15 | Started: 2002-10-27
2002-10-27 09:41 | User Profile
[url=http://www.observer.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,819941,00.html]Gore Vidal claims 'Bush junta' complicit in 9/11[/url]
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.'
2002-10-27 10:06 | User Profile
I read this earlier on another board.
Wow. I'm a positive piker when it comes to tinfoil compared to Mr. Gore Vidal!
(Certainly a well-spoken and literate man...but hey, how seriously can I take a guy whose novel Live From Golgotha engaged in lurid descriptions of apostles as buggerers?)
2002-10-27 11:29 | User Profile
(Certainly a well-spoken and literate man...but hey, how seriously can I take a guy whose novel Live From Golgotha engaged in lurid descriptions of apostles as buggerers?)
Oh..I get it. Vidal pokes fun at Christianity, which is his right, therefore he shouldn't be taken seriously.
He shouldn't be take seriously despite the fact that he's a brilliant writer, a strict non-interventionist, a champion of civil liberties, and one of the few people over the last 50 years to tell the truth about America's corrupt ruling class, which among many other vile deeds led us into World War II so we could make the world a safe place for Stalin and Bolshevism.
Unlike you, I think we should all be GRATEFUL that a writer of Vidal's stature has chosen to broach the truth about 911. Now he needs to come all the way over and lay part of the blame where it belongs: at the feet of Israel and Jews. Your wisecrack, on the other hand, only proves one thing -- Vidal's attitude toward Christians should be taken seriously.
2002-10-27 12:09 | User Profile
Great minds think alike, Tex. I would have posted Vidal's article but you beat me to it.
Valley Forge, I echo your sentiments. 911 could not have happened at a better time for the NWO crowd. If it wasn't so tragic, it would be funny. Bush as the Pied Piper of Hamelin luring the lemmings into perpetual war.
Violence begets violence. If Sharon has his way, America will ivade Iraq. It will cause more terrorist attacks on U. S soil. In the Bush Administration, Israel is the only nation that counts..
-Z-
2002-10-27 13:19 | User Profile
So many fundamental questions regarding 9/11 have been ignored - not remain unanswered, but were willfully ignored - that, added to the combination of a spectacularly ill-equipped boy king and a Macchiavellian court vizier [for Pete's sake, Cheney even looks like George Zucco!] in control of the palace, Vidal's piece isn't 'brave' so much as it's 'long-overdue'.
If Bush had any bluff exterior or sincerity-mimicking gifts at all, he might have just squeaked by with stonewalling any effort at a sound, thorough investigation by offering the public sound bites and the steely set of his jawline instead. But his soundbites are tapioca, his jawline is Waterford crystal, and the dumb f**k can't open his mouth without the Dow plunging 300 pts.
Vidal merely enunciates (with hyperbole) the nagging fear - if not the nagging certainty - haunting even the neo-leaning sheep with the flag decals on their Toyotas: something stinks. When the worst mainland disaster in American history takes place - and half-an-hour later, every tv station is abuzz with retired-military lobbyists and Jew think-tankers wrapping up Bin Laden & Afghanistan in a neat little bow - something stinks. If nobody but nobody saw it coming, why did everybody but everybody have the exact same answer ready as the bodies were still burning? The fact that this answer was found so pleasing & salutary for Business As Usual that no serious effort at uncovering what happened and why will ever be greenlighted until all possible evidence trails are icy cold just underscores that there were a whole LOTTA people ready with the answers before there were even any questions.
What Vidal, and Raimondo (who got there first but doesn't get Page-One'd in any newspaper), and the rest of them won't tell you - because they don't want it to be true - is that America knows this is a put-up job but prefers NOT to know what happened. Even Joe Sixpack, who can't find his own home state on a world atlas, let alone Turkmenistan, takes one look at Bush's Star-Search-spokesmodel-quarterfinal-runnerup line delivery and knows. Nobody loses 4000 people and commits to a trillion-dollar, 20-year war of reprisal & conquest without a full investigation of What Happened, Who Did It, and Why. Unless they were just looking for an excuse all along - in which case, hey, maybe this one time, the Price of Freedom turns out to be selective part-time vigilance.
Hey, kid: ever see a Reichstag burn twice?
2002-10-27 13:42 | User Profile
This thread reminds me to mention that when the engineers finally get around to convincingly modeling the Immaculate Declension of the towers, it will be shown that the only way to replicate the event is by reducing a portion of the central pillars at the base of the structure to molten metal.
Presumably, whatever appliances were involved were installed after the bombing of the basement by federal agents.
Just thought you'd like to know how they did it.
2002-10-28 04:35 | User Profile
Gore Vidol, despite having considerable talent as a writer and wit, has always had a touch of the crackpot and hustler in him. This latest treck into paranoidism served up to the soft minded is another example. Ditto; NeoNiietz,s attempt to scare the innocent with his curious structural theories. The readers on this forum should be critical of such frauds, whether they have established literary reputations or just out to exercise their own egos.
2002-10-28 12:50 | User Profile
Originally posted by solutrian@Oct 27 2002, 22:35 Gore Vidol, despite having considerable talent as a writer and wit, has always had ÃÂ a touch of the crackpot and hustler ÃÂ in him. This latest treck into paranoidism served up to the soft minded is another example. Ditto; NeoNiietz,s attempt to scare the innocent with his curious structural theories. The readers on this forum should be critical of such frauds, whether they have established literary reputations or just out to exercise their own egos.
BOO!
[url=http://www.americanfreepress.net/09_03_02/NEW_SEISMIC_/new_seismic_.html]http://www.americanfreepress.net/09_03_02/...w_seismic_.html[/url]
[url=http://nerdcities.com/guardian/WTC/wtc-demolition.htm]http://nerdcities.com/guardian/WTC/wtc-demolition.htm[/url]
2002-10-28 14:25 | User Profile
I'm inclined to believe Mr Vidal, so I guess I am simple-minded. Vidal makes an incredibly strong argument, and he has NOT been the only one to voice such an opinion. If one looks carefully at all the circumstances surrounding 9/11 and its' aftermath, most of us in-the-know types can sense something is rotten in Denmark. There's no excuse for 9/11 but treason, conscious or unconscious, by the US gov't. Payne Stewart, golfer, few years back; plane went off flight path, de-pressurized cabin, everyone dead. It took 19 minutes for a military aircraft to be up at the side of the wayward plane. And that's for a private jet.... WTC buildings were designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707, which is roughly the same size as a 767. Didn't the engineers figure the worst case scenario into their design??
2002-10-28 22:32 | User Profile
Engineers design for a possible bad event, not the"worst case" scenario, as commanly believed. The worst case( accident) scenario at the time of the WTT design stage would have been a fuel and munitions laden C-5 Galexy hitting it. No design can prevent total protection though one would think so judging from the scientifically illiterate nonsense served up by the media, and lawyers. Response time, be it from police, firemen, medics, or the military depends on many variables, not the least of which is luck. What is NeoNietz implying in the Payne Stewart event? That there was a conspiracy? At any rate 19 minutes seems fast to me. No matter what size plane hits a target matters little, however, if government workers are softening up the building by sabotaging it from within with HE. Really now! Atlantic Magazine has published a two part series on the WTT event by the pilot author Langewiesche(sp?) While not being the last word, the articles are informative and intelligible to laymen.
2002-10-28 22:33 | User Profile
Originally posted by solutrian@Oct 28 2002, 04:35 Gore Vidol, despite having considerable talent as a writer and wit, has always had a touch of the crackpot and hustler in him.
Examples?
2002-10-28 22:34 | User Profile
I'm sorry NeoNietz, xmetalhead, was the poster with the Payne Stewart comments.
2002-10-29 06:34 | User Profile
Originally posted by il ragno@Oct 27 2002, 13:19 What Vidal, and Raimondo (who got there first but doesn't get Page-One'd in any newspaper), and the rest of them won't tell you - because they don't want it to be true - is that America knows this is a put-up job but prefers NOT to know what happened.
That's an important point, Il Ragno.
Pearl Harbor provides an example. In that case we now KNOW CONCLUSIVELY that FDR deliberately provoked the Japanese to attack, that he knew when attack would occur, and that he let thousands of Americans die in order to get his war resolution from Congress. Many of the key documents have been declassified (even now, not all of them), and thus there is no doubt.
But NOBODY wants to believe it. I've purchased "Day of Deciet" for my East Coast New Deal Democrat side of the family, and it still doesn't matter. They don't want to look at that fact.
You see, most people do not seek the Truth with a capital "t" through an investigation of the facts and application of logic. Most people conflate "truth" with "consensus" - if everyone believes it, then it's true. If you confront them with some new fact that contradicts the accepted theory, they look to their right, then to their left, they see that nobody else thinks that way. Then they get nervous and distracted, stamp their feet, take on a dazed look, and tell you that you must be nuts to think that way.
It used to drive me crazy. But then I got over the mistaken notion that most of my interlocutors seek the "TRUTH" as a first order of business, and accepted rather that most are consensus seekers, who are simply incapable of free thought.
I learned that this need for most to blend in to the opinions of the crowd is an evolved instinct. There was survival advantage for most people to be followers, with only a few leaders. If everyone was a James Dean, after all, the tribe wouldn't have been able to hunt animals and defend themselves from enemy tribes. The tribe needed just a few "chiefs" and lots of "indians." The problem is that we evolved without the Jewish Media, and now we have no natural defense against it.
And that is our dilemma. Chaim managed to take over the information flows that properly belong to the most intelligent, virtuous and creative of our people. Some here are of that caste. But the Jewish Pretenders used their media monopoly to convince most whites that they were the true leaders. They're like some ant species that manage to get control of the chemical-scent codes of an alien hive, and then set themselves up as the ruling caste. Humans communicate in language and pictures, not chemicals and smells, and thus the controllers of those words and images will be presumed by most of our people to be their natural leaders.
And that's the way it is with us. This is why I say that only a terrible calamity can wake our people up. They must be forced to see that Chaim is not "their" leader.
Maybe, just maybe, this war will do the trick. If not, we're doomed to become a small band of persecuted outcasts.
Walter
2002-10-29 11:02 | User Profile
Valley Forge,
** Oh..I get it. Vidal pokes fun at Christianity, which is his right, therefore he shouldn't be taken seriously. **
I believe what she is saying here is that Christians wont take Vidal seriously, no matter how valid his argument. Most people are not inclined to take someone else seriously that insults what they hold dear. Thats human nature.
Not everyone is like most of the folks on this board that tend to look past comments that we don`t care for to see if the person may have a valid point for a change.
2002-10-29 11:14 | User Profile
Walter,
Sadly, I have to agree with you regarding your comment about most people and dealing with the truth. It took me years also to realize the truth of what you wrote. They dont wont to deal with it simply because it makes them uncomfortable and threatens to upset their false world view.
But the Jewish Pretenders used their media monopoly to convince most whites that they were the true leaders. They're like some ant species that manage to get control of the chemical-scent codes of an alien hive, and then set themselves up as the ruling caste.
I like how you put this. :) Most descriptive! As an example the success they have had in convincing folks check out this site. "Christian"zioNuts.
I wonder if the fakir who runs this bunch got a U.S. taxpayer paid for airplane too like Falwell did.