Angie
6th May 2002, 13:00
Fox has a habit of altering it's anti-government records, and/or deleting them from existence altogether, so I thought that I would catch this one before it disappeared. It's probably been altered, already, but it still says a lot that's worth reading. Enjoy:
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This partial transcript of FOXWire w/ Rita Cosby, April 13, was provided by the Federal Document Clearing House.
RITA COSBY, HOST: Welcome back to FOXWire. One of America's premier writers, Gore Vidal is always debating journalists, and now he debated this one. Vidal says America's policy of aggression created the environment for the September 11th attacks. And I asked him, based on his view, does that make the U.S. open to future attacks?
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GORE VIDAL, AUTHOR: Undoubtedly, and many other things are going to fall upon us, I suspect. What I've done, in a little book that is just out called, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace or How We Came To Be so Hated. Most Americans are astonished; why are we hated? We're the ones — we're the good guys. Well, I list in there; these are five essays, and one of them is about Usama bin Laden and what happened in 9/11. What I do, I list something like 300 or 400 military strikes that we have made without provocation, unilaterally, against other countries.
And it is an endless number. And no magazine or paper in the United States would print it, even though it is a matter of public record.
COSBY: And why do you think they didn't want to print it?
VIDAL: For obvious reasons, we cannot go on saying we are the good guys when we have overthrown government after government, from Guatemala to Iran. Not only do we get involved in wars, civil wars, like Vietnam. You know, I was in the Second World War and I was in the Pacific, and I had been about 14 when Pearl Harbor happened, and I was 17 when I went in the army. One of the things we used to argue about in the Pacific, why did the Japanese attack us? And do you know, our government never told us. They were just evil people, and we've heard that lately.
They were subhuman; that's all we were told.
COSBY: But in the case of bin Laden, are you saying that we should just sit back after we've lost 3000 lives on U.S. soil?
VIDAL: Of course not. On the other hand, it is not war. And every time Bush says it is war, I wish somebody would just march by with a banner. Wars Can Only Occur Between Nations. We were hit by a mob. It's like being hit by the Mafia.
COSBY: On the other hand, on the other hand, that mob that you were referring to, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, they basically ran that country. So for all intensive purposes, they were rulers of that country.
VIDAL: No, we were. We ran the Taliban for many years. We backed the Taliban when the Russians came into Afghanistan.
COSBY: But in recent years ...
VIDAL: We had the Taliban to fight them.
COSBY: ... but in recent years we've certainly been against them, and we tried to negotiate with them. What do you do, do you suggest that we negotiate with these individuals. We tried to negotiate; it didn't work.
VIDAL: We did and we didn't. We were playing, and are playing, a game that our rulers — the sort of Enron, Pentagon Junta — are never going to tell us. But this whole thing is about oil. The greatest oil reserves on earth are around the Caspian sea. And the center of that, the place that you have to put a pipeline to get that oil in our direction, or any direction runs through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean.
We wanted a government that would do what we said in Afghanistan. We thought we had it with the Taliban. They got crazier and crazier. There was nothing we could do with it, we decided to get rid of them. We already had a plan, a Pentagon contingency plan, as of August for an invasion of Afghanistan in October. And it is thought that bin Laden got news of this, word of this, and what he did to us in New York and Washington was a pre- emptory strike. This was ...
COSBY: But don't you believe we had to respond, regardless of whatever principles were there beforehand. Don't you think we had to take some ...
VIDAL: Well sure ...
COSBY: ... sort of military response, in light of what happened on our own soil.
VIDAL: Not military. You don't go bombing the cities of a neutral country like Afghanistan, which has nothing to do with bin Laden. You go after the murderers. You go after bin Laden and the Al Qaeda. You know, I was in Italy when Palermo, they blew up the Chief of Police and all of his staff in a great Cortege (ph). It was a terrible event. Did Rome bomb Palermo or Sicily? No.
COSBY: Right, but in that case you could say that the mob ran the country somewhat in this case. Many people would say the Taliban certainly ran that country. I want to play a quote for you, first if I can and just have you respond.
VIDAL: Yes.
COSBY: You said in the book that, "Bin Laden strikes at America at the moment we are entering a World Depression. It is the most fragile moment in the West. For someone who does not wish us well, that was brilliantly timed."
Do you think bin Laden was a master strategist?
VIDAL: Well it certainly was when it came to that. Remember, he comes from one of the wealthiest banking families in the Middle East. The real enemy here was never Afghanistan, it was Saudi Arabia. We don't dare go after the Saudi Arabia because the Bushs and the Junta that governs us is too closely connected with them. And our oil, the Persian Gulf oil is centered upon Saudi Arabia. So we ...
COSBY: Isn't it, isn't it also though — OK, sort of, let's blame us for something when there are people who are just going to do things regardless of our policy. I mean, not everyone is going to like us, even if we have the best of intentions.
VIDAL: You know, the first law of physics, "There is no action without reaction." We have gone through our history pretending that we are innocent of everything.
COSBY: But there are some people who, say ...
VIDAL: And there are just bad people ...
COSBY: ... are just going to be jealous of America. America's got money, America's better financed, America has better military. There are some people who just don't like America, even if we don't have any policies against them.
VIDAL: Well we have to (INAUDIBLE) against almost everybody. And as far as that goes, most people don't act upon mild dislike. They act — when I listed all of the strikes. I mean, Panama (INAUDIBLE) that attacks us. We've done terrible things to them, to Guatemala. We've terrible things in the Congo — all around the world. Somebody is bound to get angry at some point. But we had a master plan; we still got it. We must get control of Central Asia's oil. That is the wealth of the world and that is our strategy. Why is it that there has been no congressional investigation of why the FBI and the CIA seemed to be asleep on September 11th? They were napping. Why they never investigated the Timothy McVeigh bombing, and to find out who else was involved.
COSBY: Who else do you think was involved?
VIDAL: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
COSBY: I know you've done some research. You believe there were other people involved, Middle Easterners; correct?
VIDAL: It has certainly been alleged. And the FBI knows about it but no one's followed up as far as we can tell. Yes, there was an Iraqi connection. There was about six Iraqis that Clinton had — they were part of Sadam's Republican Guard. And they were given their freedom and we're useful as double agents for us and we're sent to Oklahoma City. And it was said that McVeigh had met them.
Whether he did or not, I don't know, because the FBI was in such a hurry to execute McVeigh, and not find out what it was that he knew. Also he wrote you letters, he wrote me letters. And in them he always referred to his federally assisted suicide. He wanted to die, and he wanted to die quickly because he didn't want to sing, to talk, to say who else was involved in the plot. He also didn't want to spend his life in prison, which was what he'd have to do. So he preferred death.
COSBY: So, what do you base this on, Gore, is this from your own information? Or what do you base this on?
VIDAL: Letters to me, which I publish in a volume that is now available, called, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace released by Avalon Books. And you will see McVeigh's letters to me from ...
COSBY: But the Middle Eastern connection, what do you base that on — and the Iraqi involvement?
VIDAL: Oh, FBI inquiries. What do they call them; 310s I think they are. I assume they go to somebody. Question them; they make notes. And they are supposed to follow-up. Well they didn't follow up in this. They had — my list in the book — something like 30 leads that the FBI had, and they had picked up. They were doing their job. But nobody ever followed up on. These are all found at discovery during various trials across the country. We'll never know what happened, because we're not meant to know. Senator Danforth was put in charge of an investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing. He spent $12 million and did a total whitewash. Of Waco, I should say, rather than Oklahoma City.
COSBY: Gore Vidal, one of America's most controversial and premier writers.
------
Source: FoxWire (http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,50335,00.html)
------
This partial transcript of FOXWire w/ Rita Cosby, April 13, was provided by the Federal Document Clearing House.
RITA COSBY, HOST: Welcome back to FOXWire. One of America's premier writers, Gore Vidal is always debating journalists, and now he debated this one. Vidal says America's policy of aggression created the environment for the September 11th attacks. And I asked him, based on his view, does that make the U.S. open to future attacks?
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GORE VIDAL, AUTHOR: Undoubtedly, and many other things are going to fall upon us, I suspect. What I've done, in a little book that is just out called, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace or How We Came To Be so Hated. Most Americans are astonished; why are we hated? We're the ones — we're the good guys. Well, I list in there; these are five essays, and one of them is about Usama bin Laden and what happened in 9/11. What I do, I list something like 300 or 400 military strikes that we have made without provocation, unilaterally, against other countries.
And it is an endless number. And no magazine or paper in the United States would print it, even though it is a matter of public record.
COSBY: And why do you think they didn't want to print it?
VIDAL: For obvious reasons, we cannot go on saying we are the good guys when we have overthrown government after government, from Guatemala to Iran. Not only do we get involved in wars, civil wars, like Vietnam. You know, I was in the Second World War and I was in the Pacific, and I had been about 14 when Pearl Harbor happened, and I was 17 when I went in the army. One of the things we used to argue about in the Pacific, why did the Japanese attack us? And do you know, our government never told us. They were just evil people, and we've heard that lately.
They were subhuman; that's all we were told.
COSBY: But in the case of bin Laden, are you saying that we should just sit back after we've lost 3000 lives on U.S. soil?
VIDAL: Of course not. On the other hand, it is not war. And every time Bush says it is war, I wish somebody would just march by with a banner. Wars Can Only Occur Between Nations. We were hit by a mob. It's like being hit by the Mafia.
COSBY: On the other hand, on the other hand, that mob that you were referring to, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, they basically ran that country. So for all intensive purposes, they were rulers of that country.
VIDAL: No, we were. We ran the Taliban for many years. We backed the Taliban when the Russians came into Afghanistan.
COSBY: But in recent years ...
VIDAL: We had the Taliban to fight them.
COSBY: ... but in recent years we've certainly been against them, and we tried to negotiate with them. What do you do, do you suggest that we negotiate with these individuals. We tried to negotiate; it didn't work.
VIDAL: We did and we didn't. We were playing, and are playing, a game that our rulers — the sort of Enron, Pentagon Junta — are never going to tell us. But this whole thing is about oil. The greatest oil reserves on earth are around the Caspian sea. And the center of that, the place that you have to put a pipeline to get that oil in our direction, or any direction runs through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean.
We wanted a government that would do what we said in Afghanistan. We thought we had it with the Taliban. They got crazier and crazier. There was nothing we could do with it, we decided to get rid of them. We already had a plan, a Pentagon contingency plan, as of August for an invasion of Afghanistan in October. And it is thought that bin Laden got news of this, word of this, and what he did to us in New York and Washington was a pre- emptory strike. This was ...
COSBY: But don't you believe we had to respond, regardless of whatever principles were there beforehand. Don't you think we had to take some ...
VIDAL: Well sure ...
COSBY: ... sort of military response, in light of what happened on our own soil.
VIDAL: Not military. You don't go bombing the cities of a neutral country like Afghanistan, which has nothing to do with bin Laden. You go after the murderers. You go after bin Laden and the Al Qaeda. You know, I was in Italy when Palermo, they blew up the Chief of Police and all of his staff in a great Cortege (ph). It was a terrible event. Did Rome bomb Palermo or Sicily? No.
COSBY: Right, but in that case you could say that the mob ran the country somewhat in this case. Many people would say the Taliban certainly ran that country. I want to play a quote for you, first if I can and just have you respond.
VIDAL: Yes.
COSBY: You said in the book that, "Bin Laden strikes at America at the moment we are entering a World Depression. It is the most fragile moment in the West. For someone who does not wish us well, that was brilliantly timed."
Do you think bin Laden was a master strategist?
VIDAL: Well it certainly was when it came to that. Remember, he comes from one of the wealthiest banking families in the Middle East. The real enemy here was never Afghanistan, it was Saudi Arabia. We don't dare go after the Saudi Arabia because the Bushs and the Junta that governs us is too closely connected with them. And our oil, the Persian Gulf oil is centered upon Saudi Arabia. So we ...
COSBY: Isn't it, isn't it also though — OK, sort of, let's blame us for something when there are people who are just going to do things regardless of our policy. I mean, not everyone is going to like us, even if we have the best of intentions.
VIDAL: You know, the first law of physics, "There is no action without reaction." We have gone through our history pretending that we are innocent of everything.
COSBY: But there are some people who, say ...
VIDAL: And there are just bad people ...
COSBY: ... are just going to be jealous of America. America's got money, America's better financed, America has better military. There are some people who just don't like America, even if we don't have any policies against them.
VIDAL: Well we have to (INAUDIBLE) against almost everybody. And as far as that goes, most people don't act upon mild dislike. They act — when I listed all of the strikes. I mean, Panama (INAUDIBLE) that attacks us. We've done terrible things to them, to Guatemala. We've terrible things in the Congo — all around the world. Somebody is bound to get angry at some point. But we had a master plan; we still got it. We must get control of Central Asia's oil. That is the wealth of the world and that is our strategy. Why is it that there has been no congressional investigation of why the FBI and the CIA seemed to be asleep on September 11th? They were napping. Why they never investigated the Timothy McVeigh bombing, and to find out who else was involved.
COSBY: Who else do you think was involved?
VIDAL: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
COSBY: I know you've done some research. You believe there were other people involved, Middle Easterners; correct?
VIDAL: It has certainly been alleged. And the FBI knows about it but no one's followed up as far as we can tell. Yes, there was an Iraqi connection. There was about six Iraqis that Clinton had — they were part of Sadam's Republican Guard. And they were given their freedom and we're useful as double agents for us and we're sent to Oklahoma City. And it was said that McVeigh had met them.
Whether he did or not, I don't know, because the FBI was in such a hurry to execute McVeigh, and not find out what it was that he knew. Also he wrote you letters, he wrote me letters. And in them he always referred to his federally assisted suicide. He wanted to die, and he wanted to die quickly because he didn't want to sing, to talk, to say who else was involved in the plot. He also didn't want to spend his life in prison, which was what he'd have to do. So he preferred death.
COSBY: So, what do you base this on, Gore, is this from your own information? Or what do you base this on?
VIDAL: Letters to me, which I publish in a volume that is now available, called, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace released by Avalon Books. And you will see McVeigh's letters to me from ...
COSBY: But the Middle Eastern connection, what do you base that on — and the Iraqi involvement?
VIDAL: Oh, FBI inquiries. What do they call them; 310s I think they are. I assume they go to somebody. Question them; they make notes. And they are supposed to follow-up. Well they didn't follow up in this. They had — my list in the book — something like 30 leads that the FBI had, and they had picked up. They were doing their job. But nobody ever followed up on. These are all found at discovery during various trials across the country. We'll never know what happened, because we're not meant to know. Senator Danforth was put in charge of an investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing. He spent $12 million and did a total whitewash. Of Waco, I should say, rather than Oklahoma City.
COSBY: Gore Vidal, one of America's most controversial and premier writers.
------
Source: FoxWire (http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,50335,00.html)