Gore Vidal Says Oil Thirst Behind Bush Policies - November 05, 2002 By
Roberto Bonzio

MILAN, Italy (Reuters) - Controversial U.S. author Gore Vidal said
Tuesday President Bush organized last year's invasion of Afghanistan to
gain control of nearby oil and natural gas resources rather than to
fight terror.

"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.

 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.


Reuters.com - Gore Vidal Says Oil Thirst Behind Bush Policies

reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?
type=search&StoryID=1683150&fromEmail=true