NEWS FROM THE FRONT
Rising blearily to rain & wind this morning, I was greatly cheered by the blithe optimism of Pete King, a flunky working for authentic frontier hero, George W. Bush. Closely questioned on BBCís ëTodayí programme, he replied that he didnít feel in any way that the mounting death toll of American soldiers indicated that the situation for the coalition was worsening & that the overall post-war condition of the country was giving grace cause for concern.
At lunchtime on one of those pinko-commie-fag chat show programmes some wag suggested that Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the elusive Iraqi ex-Minister of Information, was alive & well & working for the White House. Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Pete King. Go figureÖ
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The estimable Oscar winner Michael Moore ñ another know-nothing amateur political pundit like you & I, ignorant as to the realities of the situation in Iraq ñ has seven questions he wishes to put to George W. Bush. For all its obsession with moral pygmy Paul Burrellís royal revelations, The Daily Mirror deserves credit for publishing Mooreís questionnaire in full. Here ëtisÖ
SEVEN QUESTIONS FOR YOU MR BUSH
This month arch enemies President George Bush and Oscar winner Michael Moore both arrive in Britain. But while George Bush flies in on November 19 to thank his buddy Tony Blair for support in Iraq, writer and film maker Moore is here this week condemning the two leaders' war on terror.
A new poll has shown 51 per cent of Americans now disapprove of Bush's handling of Iraq. And perhaps his most impassioned opponent is Moore, who in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mirror yesterday, branded the deaths of young soldiers in the war as "disgraceful and disgusting".
Now, in an extract from his provocative new book, Dude, Where's My Country? controversial author Moore asks a series of questions which cut to the heart of US motives in Iraq and demands: 'Mr Bush, what is going on here?'
1. Is it true that the Bin Laden family has had business relations with you and your family on and off for the past 25 years? Most people might be surprised to learn that you and your father have known them for a long time. What exactly is the extent of this relationship, Mr Bush? The Bin Ladens are one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia. Their huge construction firm virtually built the country. They built some of the airstrips America used in your dad's Gulf War. They have extensive dealings with Citigroup, General Electric, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and the Fremont Group. They have donated $2million (£1.2million) to your alma mater, Harvard. They own property in Texas, Florida and Massachusetts. In short, they have their hands deep in our pants.
After leaving office, your father became a highly paid consultant for 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 $2million - was the Bin Laden family. Until 1994, you headed a company called CaterAir, owned by the Carlyle Group.
It was no secret to the CIA that Osama Bin Laden had access to his family fortune.
2. What is the "special relationship" between the Bushes and the Saudi royal family? The entire royal family seems to be indebted to you - or is it the other way round? 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 it, our corporations and financial institutions would be sent into a tailspin. Couple that with the fact that the 1.5 million 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? Who is it good for? You? Pops?
3. 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?
Might it have been possible that at least one of the 24 Bin Ladens would have known something?
4. Who attacked the US on 9/11 - a guy on dialysis from a cave in Afghanistan, or your friend, Saudi Arabia? You got us all repeating by like parrots that it was Osama who was responsible. But then I started hearing strange stories about Osama's kidneys. 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, plotted so perfectly the hijacking of four planes and guaranteed that three of them would end up precisely on their targets? Why, when Congress released its own investigation into September 11, did you, Mr Bush, censor 28 pages that deal with the Saudis' role in the attack?
What if 9/11 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 storeys high. Had the pilots been off by just a hair, they'd have been in the river. You do not get this skilled at flying jumbo jets by being taught on a video game machine at some minor flight training school in Arizona. You learn to do this in the air force. Someone's air force.
The Saudi air force?
5. Why are you protecting the Second Amendment rights [Americans' "right" to bear arms] of potential terrorists? 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 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.
I truly love how you have rounded up hundreds of people and shipped them out of the country on immigration charges. You can waive rights, but when it comes to the right to own an AK-47, oh no! That right they can have - and you will defend their right to have it. Who is really aiding the terrorists here?
6. Were you aware that, while you were governor of Texas, the Taliban travelled there to meet your oil and gas company friends? They came to meet 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. Representatives of your administration met the Taliban or conveyed messages to them during the summer of 2001.
Were you discussing their offer to hand over Bin Laden? Were you threatening them with force? Were you discussing a new 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". Were you thinking you should have taken reports the CIA had given you the month before more seriously? You had been told al-Qaeda was planning attacks in the US and planes would possibly be used. Or were you just scared witless?
Or... maybe, just maybe, you were sitting there thinking about your Saudi friends - 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 the Democrats have the guts to dig into your family's past with these people? Would the truth ever come out?
(c) Michael Moore 2003.
12:42:33 AM 
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