[kj] OT: FW: more di moore

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Michael Moore again ... contra Bush

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From: groterath@iol.it [mailto:groterath@iol.it]
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 8:57 AM
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Answers please, Mr Bush





Michael Moore fired his opening salvo against George Bush and his rightwing
cronies with his bestseller Stupid White Men. Now the president is in his
sights again. In this second extract from his new book he asks his old
enemy seven awkward questions





Monday October 6, 2003


The Guardian





I have seven questions for you, Mr Bush. I ask them on behalf of the 3,000
who died that September day, and I ask them on behalf of the American
people. We seek no revenge against you. We want only to know what happened,
and what can be done to bring the murderers to justice, so we can prevent
any future attacks on our citizens.


1. Is it true that the Bin Ladens have had business relations with you and
your family off and on for the past 25 years?


Most Americans might be surprised to learn that you and your father have
known the Bin Ladens for a long time. What, exactly, is the extent of this
relationship, Mr Bush? Are you close personal friends, or simply on-again,
off-again business associates? Salem bin Laden - Osama's brother - first
started coming to Texas in 1973 and later bought some land, built himself a
house, and created Bin Laden Aviation at the San Antonio airfield.


The Bin Ladens are one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia. Their
huge construction firm virtually built the country, from the roads and
power plants to the skyscrapers and government buildings. They built some
of the airstrips America used in your dad's Gulf war. Billionaires many
times over, they soon began investing in other ventures around the world,
including the US. They have extensive business dealings with Citigroup,
General Electric, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and the Fremont Group.


According to the New Yorker, the bin Laden family also owns a part of
Microsoft and the airline and defence giant Boeing. They have donated $2m
to your alma mater, Harvard University, and tens of thousands to the Middle
East Policy Council, a think-tank headed by a former US ambassador to Saudi
Arabia, Charles Freeman. In addition to the property they own in Texas,
they also have real estate in Florida and Massachusetts. In short, they
have their hands deep in our pants.


Unfortunately, as you know, Mr Bush, Salem bin Laden died in a plane crash
in Texas in 1988. Salem's brothers - there are around 50 of them, including
Osama - continued to run the family companies and investments.


After leaving office, your father became a highly paid consultant for a
company known as the Carlyle Group - one of the nation's largest defence
contractors. One of the investors in the Carlyle Group - to the tune of at
least $2m - was none other than the Bin Laden family. Until 1994, you
headed a company called CaterAir, which was owned by the Carlyle Group.


After September 11, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal both
ran stories pointing out this connection. Your first response, Mr Bush, was
to ignore it. Then your army of pundits went into spin control. They said,
we can't paint these Bin Ladens with the same brush we use for Osama. They
have disowned Osama! They have nothing to do with him! These are the good
Bin Ladens.


And then the video footage came out. It showed a number of these "good" Bin
Ladens - including Osama's mother, a sister and two brothers - with Osama
at his son's wedding just six and a half months before September 11. It was
no secret to the CIA that Osama bin Laden had access to his family fortune
(his share is estimated to be at least $30m), and the Bin Ladens, as well
as other Saudis, kept Osama and his group, al-Qaida, well funded.


You've gotten a free ride from the media, though they know everything I
have just written to be the truth. They seem unwilling or afraid to ask you
a simple question, Mr Bush: WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?


In case you don't understand just how bizarre the media's silence is
regarding the Bush-Bin Laden connections, let me draw an analogy to how the
press or Congress might have handled something like this if the same shoe
had been on the Clinton foot. If, after the terrorist attack on the Federal
Building in Oklahoma City, it had been revealed that President Bill Clinton
and his family had financial dealings with Timothy McVeigh's family, what
do you think your Republican party and the media would have done with that
one?

Do you think at least a couple of questions might have been asked, such as,
"What is that all about?" Be honest, you know the answer. They would have
asked more than a couple of questions. They would have skinned Clinton
alive and thrown what was left of his carcass in Guantanamo Bay.


2. What is the 'special relationship' between the Bushes and the Saudi
royal family?


Mr Bush, the Bin Ladens are not the only Saudis with whom you and your
family have a close personal relationship. The entire royal family seems to
be indebted to you - or is it the other way round?


The number one supplier of oil to the US is the nation of Saudi Arabia,
possessor of the largest known reserves of oil in the world. When Saddam
Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, it was really the Saudis next door who felt
threatened, and it was your father, George Bush I, who came to their
rescue. The Saudis have never forgotten this. Haifa, wife of Prince Bandar,
the Saudi ambassador to the US, says that your mother and father "are like
my mother and father. I know if ever I needed anything I could go to them".


A major chunk of the American economy is built on Saudi money. They have a
trillion dollars invested in our stock market and another trillion dollars
in our banks. If they chose suddenly to remove that money, our corporations
and financial institutions would be sent into a tailspin, causing an
economic crisis the likes of which has never been seen. Couple that with
the fact that the 1.5m barrels of oil we need daily from the Saudis could
also vanish on a mere royal whim, and we begin to see how not only you, but
all of us, are dependent on the House of Saud. George, is this good for our
national security, our homeland security? Who is it good for? You? Pops?


After meeting with the Saudi crown prince in April 2002, you happily told
us that the two of you had "established a strong personal bond" and that
you "spent a lot of time alone". Were you trying to reassure us? Or just
flaunt your friendship with a group of rulers who rival the Taliban in
their suppression of human rights? Why the double standard?


3. Who attacked the US on September 11 - a guy on dialysis from a cave in
Afghanistan, or your friend, Saudi Arabia?


I'm sorry, Mr Bush, but something doesn't make sense.


You got us all repeating by rote that it was Osama bin Laden who was
responsible for the attack on the United States on September 11. Even I was
doing it. But then I started hearing strange stories about Osama's kidneys.
Suddenly, I don't know who or what to trust. How could a guy sitting in a
cave in Afghanistan, hooked up to dialysis, have directed and overseen the
actions of 19 terrorists for two years in the US then plotted so perfectly
the hijacking of four planes and then guaranteed that three of them would
end up precisely on their targets? How did he organise, communicate,
control and supervise this kind of massive attack? With two cans and a
string?


The headlines blared it the first day and they blare it the same way now
two years later: "Terrorists Attack United States." Terrorists. I have
wondered about this word for some time, so, George, let me ask you a
question: if 15 of the 19 hijackers had been North Korean, rather than
Saudi, and they had killed 3,000 people, do you think the headline the next
day might have read, "NORTH KOREA ATTACKS UNITED STATES"? Of course it
would. Or if it had been 15 Iranians or 15 Libyans or 15 Cubans, I think
the conventional wisdom would have been, "IRAN [or LIBYA or CUBA] ATTACKS
AMERICA!" Yet, when it comes to September 11, have you ever seen the
headline, have you ever heard a newscaster, has one of your appointees ever
uttered these words: "Saudi Arabia attacked the United States"?


Of course you haven't. And so the question must - must - be asked: why not?
Why, when Congress released its own investigation into September 11, did
you, Mr Bush, censor out 28 pages that deal with the Saudis' role in the
attack?


I would like to throw out a possibility here: what if September 11 was not
a "terrorist" attack but, rather, a military attack against the United
States? George, apparently you were a pilot once - how hard is it to hit a
five-storey building at more than 500 miles an hour? The Pentagon is only
five stories high. At 500 miles an hour, had the pilots been off by just a
hair, they'd have been in the river. You do not get this skilled at
learning how to fly jumbo jets by being taught on a video game machine at
some dipshit flight training school in Arizona. You learn to do this in the
air force. Someone's air force.


The Saudi air force?


What if these weren't wacko terrorists, but military pilots who signed on
to a suicide mission? What if they were doing this at the behest of either
the Saudi government or certain disgruntled members of the Saudi royal
family? The House of Saud, according to Robert Baer's book Sleeping With
the Devil, is full of them. So, did certain factions within the Saudi royal
family execute the attack on September 11? Were these pilots trained by the
Saudis? Why are you so busy protecting the Saudis when you should be
protecting us?


4. Why did you allow a private Saudi jet to fly around the US in the days
after September 11 and pick up members of the Bin Laden family and fly them
out of the country without a proper investigation by the FBI?


Private jets, under the supervision of the Saudi government - and with your
approval - were allowed to fly around the skies of America, when travelling
by air was forbidden, and pick up 24 members of the Bin Laden family and
take them first to a "secret assembly point in Texas". They then flew to
Washington DC, and then on to Boston. Finally, on September 18, they were
all flown to Paris, out of the reach of any US officials. They never went
through any serious interrogation. This is mind-boggling. Might it have
been possible that at least one of the 24 Bin Ladens would have possibly
known something?


While thousands were stranded and could not fly, if you could prove you
were a close relative of the biggest mass murderer in US history, you got a
free trip to gay Paree!


Why, Mr Bush, was this allowed to happen?


5. Why are you protecting the Second Amendment rights of potential
terrorists?


Mr Bush, in the days after September 11, the FBI began running a check to
see if any of the 186 "suspects" the feds had rounded up in the first five
days after the attack had purchased any guns in the months leading up to
September 11 (two of them had). When your attorney general, John Ashcroft,
heard about this, he immediately shut down the search. He told the FBI that
the background check files could not be used for such a search and these
files were only to be used at the time of a purchase of a gun.

 Mr Bush, you can't be serious! Is your administration really so gun nutty
and so deep in the pocket of the National Rifle Association? I truly love
how you have rounded up hundreds of people, grabbing them off the streets
without notice, throwing them in prison cells, unable to contact lawyers or
family, and then, for the most part, shipped them out of the country on
mere immigration charges.


You can waive their Fourth Amendment protection from unlawful search and
seizure, their Sixth Amendment rights to an open trial by a jury of their
peers and the right to counsel, and their First Amendment rights to speak,
assemble, dissent and practise their religion. You believe you have the
right to just trash all these rights, but when it comes to the Second
Amendment right to own an AK-47 - oh no! That right they can have - and you
will defend their right to have it.


Who, Mr Bush, is really aiding the terrorists here?

6. Were you aware that, while you were governor of Texas, the Taliban
travelled to Texas to meet with your oil and gas company friends?


According to the BBC, the Taliban came to Texas while you were governor to
meet with Unocal, the huge oil and energy giant, to discuss Unocal's desire
to build a natural-gas pipeline running from Turkmenistan through
Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and into Pakistan.


Mr Bush, what was this all about?


"Houston, we have a problem," apparently never crossed your mind, even
though the Taliban were perhaps the most repressive fundamentalist regime
on the planet. What role exactly did you play in the Unocal meetings with
the Taliban?


According to various reports, representatives of your administration met
with the Taliban or conveyed messages to them during the summer of 2001.
What were those messages, Mr Bush? Were you discussing their offer to hand
over Bin Laden? Were you threatening them with use of force? Were you
talking to them about a pipeline?


7. What exactly was that look on your face in the Florida classroom on the
morning of September 11 when your chief of staff told you, 'America is
under attack'?


On the morning of September 11, you took a jog on a golf course and then
headed to Booker elementary school in Florida to read to little children.
You arrived at the school after the first plane had hit the north tower in
New York City. You entered the classroom around 9am and the second plane
hit the south tower at 9.03am. Just a few minutes later, as you were
sitting in front of the class of kids, your chief of staff, Andrew Card,
entered the room and whispered in your ear. Card was apparently telling you
about the second plane and about us being "under attack".


And it was at that very moment that your face went into a distant glaze,
not quite a blank look, but one that seemed partially paralysed. No emotion
was shown. And then ... you just sat there. You sat there for another seven
minutes or so doing nothing.

 George, what were you thinking? What did that look on your face mean?

Were you thinking you should have taken reports the CIA had given you the
month before more seriously? You had been told al-Qaida was planning attacks
in the United States and that planes would possibly be used.

Or were you just scared shitless?


Or maybe you were just thinking, "I did not want this job in the first
place! This was supposed to be Jeb's job; he was the chosen one! Why me?
Why me, daddy?"


Or ... maybe, just maybe, you were sitting there in that classroom chair
thinking about your Saudi friends - both the royals and the Bin Ladens.
People you knew all too well that might have been up to no good. Would
questions be asked? Would suspicions arise? Would the Democrats have the
guts to dig into your family's past with these people (no, don't worry,
never a chance of that!)? Would the truth ever come out?


And while I'm at it ...


Danger - multi-millionaires at large


I've always thought it was interesting that the mass murder of September 11
was allegedly committed by a multi-millionaire. We always say it was
committed by a "terrorist" or by an "Islamic fundamentalist" or an "Arab",
but we never define Osama by his rightful title: multi-millionaire. Why
have we never read a headline saying, "3,000 Killed by multi-millionaire"?
It would be a correct headline, would it not?


Osama bin Laden has assets totalling at least $30m; he is a
multi-millionaire. So why isn't that the way we see this person, as a rich
fuck who kills people? Why didn't that become the reason for profiling
potential terrorists? Instead of rounding up suspicious Arabs, why don't we
say, "Oh my God, a multi-millionaire killed 3,000 people! Round up the
multi-millionaires! Throw them all in jail! No charges! No trials! Deport
the millionaires!!"


Keeping America safe


The US Patriot Act and the enemy combatant designation are just a hint of
what Bush has in store for us. Consider a brainchild of Admiral John
Poindexter, an Iran-contra perp, and the Defence Advanced Research Projects
Agency (Darpa): the "policy analysis market", which the government was to
put up on a website.


Apparently, Poindexter reasoned that commodity futures markets worked so
well for Bush's buddies at Enron that he could adapt it to predicting
terrorism. Individuals would be able to invest in hypothetical futures
contracts involving the likelihood of such events as "an assassination of
Yasser Arafat" or "the overthrow of Jordan's King Abdullah II". Other
futures would be available based on the economic health, civil stability
and military involvement in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Saudi
Arabia, Syria and Turkey. All oil-related countries.


The proposed market lasted about one day after it was revealed to the
Senate. Senators Wyden and Dorgan protested the Pentagon's $8m request, and
Wyden said, "Make-believe markets trading in possibilities that turn the
stomach hardly seem like a sensible next step to take with taxpayers money
in the war on terror." As a result of the uproar over this, Poindexter was
asked to step down.


Giving Saddam the key to Detroit


In Las Vegas, an armoured fighting vehicle was used to crush French yogurt,
French bread, bottles of French wine, Perrier, Grey Goose vodka, photos of
Chirac, a guide to Paris and, best of all, photocopies of the French flag.
France was the perfect country to pick on. If you're a cable news company,
why spend priceless reporting time on investigating whether Iraq really
does have weapons of mass destruction when you can do a story about how
rotten the French are?


Fox News led the charge of pinning Chirac to Saddam Hussein, showing old
footage of the two men together. It didn't matter that the meeting had
taken place in the 1970s. The media didn't bother to run (over and over
again) the footage from when Saddam was presented with a key to the city of
Detroit, or the film from the early 1980s of Donald Rumsfeld visiting
Saddam in Baghdad to discuss the progress of the Iran-Iraq war. The footage
of Rumsfeld embracing Saddam apparently wasn't worth running on a
continuous loop. Or even once. OK, maybe once. On Oprah.


· © Michael Moore 2003. To order a copy of Dude, Where's My Country?, by
Michael Moore, for £11.99 plus p&p (rrp £17.99), call the Guardian book
service on 0870 066 7979. Published by Allen Lane on October 7.