Posted on 11/05/2002 6:26:15 PM PST by Jacob Kell
MILAN, Italy (Reuters) - Controversial U.S. author Gore Vidal said Tuesday President Bush (news - web sites) organized last year's invasion of Afghanistan (news - web sites) to gain control of nearby oil and natural gas resources rather than to fight terror.
Reuters Photo
"We know what they want. They want Caspian oil," the outspoken writer told Reuters in a telephone interview from Rome. "Every important player in the administration is from the oil and gas business, mostly Texas."
The Bush administration led a coalition last year that toppled Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement, which Washington said harbored militants responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (news - web sites).
The attacks, carried out by hijackers who rammed commercial jets into the buildings, killed more than 3,000 people.
But Vidal, 77, who has written a series of historical novels as well as numerous books and essays critical of U.S. policies, argued that the invasion of Afghanistan had little to do with hunting al Qaeda, the radical Muslim network blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks.
"We conquered Afghanistan in order to put in a pipeline," Vidal said. "We captured Afghanistan because that is the gateway to Caspian Sea oil."
The author also repeated recent accusations that Bush did not do all he could to prevent the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"An hour and 20 minutes passed before any plane goes up," said Vidal, who spends much of his time at his home in the town of Ravello, on southern Italy's Amalfi coast. "And we have nothing but fighter planes up and down the United States."
"Why didn't the president do anything?"
The White House has said Bush authorized U.S. fighters to shoot down commercial airliners under the control of hijackers only after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and that no such policy existed beforehand.
Vidal, one of contemporary America's harshest critics, was also scathing about the U.S. media, accusing them of misinformation that he said would contribute to apathy at the polls in Tuesday's mid-term elections.
"The same people own the media that own the White House that own the Congress that own the oil fields," he said. "They all work together to give a false view of the world to the American people," he said.
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