Gore Vidal vs. William F. 'Crypto Nazi' Buckley in 1968

[Octafish]

4. That was something. Remember Vidal's exchange on ''Crossfire'' with Tucker Carlson?

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CARVILLE: Welcome back to CROSSFIRE. When was the last time you heard President Bush say he wants Osama bin Laden dead or alive? But just about everyday you hear the president saying he wants to disarm Saddam Hussein. Our next guest thinks the Bush administration has its priorities screwed up, but you can probably guess that from the title of his book. It's called "Dreaming War: Blood For Oil and the Cheney- Bush Junta." From Los Angeles, please welcome author, Gore Vidal.

CARLSON: Now, Mr. Vidal, you make a pretty serious charge. A number of them in this book, but here's one from page 17. I want to read it to you. You write, "The unlovely Osama was chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the frightening logo for our long contemplated invasion and conquest of Afghanistan, planning for which had been `contingency' some years before 9/11."

The implication is that Osama bin Laden was some sort of patsy, a Richard Jewell figure, sort of chosen. Do you believe that?

GORE VIDAL, AUTHOR: Well, that's not what I'm saying.

CARLSON: What are you saying?

VIDAL: I don't propose a remedial reading course for you, but the sentence is quite the contrary.

CARLSON: Look, you seem to be saying that...

VIDAL: Osama bin Laden did what he did.

CARLSON: What did he do?

VIDAL: Well, what did Bush do? There had been a contingency plan of the Clinton administration and Sandy Berger who was the national security adviser actually handed to Condoleezza Rice who took his place in the new administration of George W. Bush, their plans for an October strike at Afghanistan.

There was an opportunity for us to prepare. It wasn't taken. Osama bin Laden was then used to excite everybody, I'm quite sure -- I'm not quite sure, but I agree with everybody else that he was certainly responsible for 9/11.

But talking about lying and, by the way, "The New York Times," the newspaper I cannot stand had today a wonderful column by a guy called Crudman (ph) listing some 40 lies that Bush has told us recently.

CARLSON: Wait, wait, Mr. Vidal, before you go on...

VIDAL: Let me complete my thought.

CARLSON: Can just you answer my question, though?

VIDAL: You don't have a question...

CARLSON: Here it is. Was Osama bin Laden responsible for attacking the World trade Center and the Pentagon? You imply...

VIDAL: Yes, of course, he was, but he was then used, first of all to excite the American people. We were going to go after them. We were going to go after Afghanistan. We were going to kill off the Taliban. We were going to kill off al Qaeda.

Then suddenly in the middle of it comes the biggest lie of all, we're after Iraq. And we pretend that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11, which he did not. That is the point to this discourse, not that he is used as a logo. That is irony. Sometimes I think it should be printed in blue.

CARVILLE: Well, if somebody who actually did need a remedial course and I haven't taken any of them, I need another remedial courses here. I want to get to the crux of what you are saying here. In Afghanistan, and we'll move to Iraq, there's no oil in Afghanistan, is there?

VIDAL: No, but there are Unocal, Union Oil of California, had a contract when the Taliban, when they were governing there and we had put them there originally to fight the Russians. They then went crazy on us and it was impossible for Unocal to build a pipeline to get the Caspian oil out of all those little countries that end in the word "stan," Uzbekistan and so on.

Afghanistan was necessary to have a pipeline that would take that oil from the Caspian Sea down to Afghanistan, through Pakistan, to the Port of Karachi in the Indian Ocean where it would be loaded aboard Chinese ships as they are hungry for oil and that was the deal.

The deal was screwed up by the Taliban who went crazy, so we -- then Osama bin Laden enters the scene, providing us with a perfect pretext for going into Afghanistan which the previous administration, and you can blame this on Clinton, if you like, had been planning to do.

Now that's at play. It's all about oil. It's all about money. It's about energy. So one thing, if I may make a suggestion to Tucker -- is that your name?

CARLSON: Yes, Gore, yes. Mr. Vidal, that's right.

VIDAL: Yes, I like Mr. Vidal better, anyway. I like your tie.

CARLSON: Thank you.

VIDAL: You're welcome. Don't personalize everything. One of the reasons that television is so dreadful and unwatchable by anybody with an I.Q. slightly above room temperature except as a sport like this in which you get a lot of people shouting, everything is personalities. Oh, Hillary Clinton...

CARLSON: Wait, wait, wait. One of the requirements of television is that you answer the question. I asked you a simple one.

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: But perhaps you can answer it. I want to read from your book that we're talking about. This is a quote...

VIDAL: You are not talking about it.

CARLSON: Oh, I am. I simply want to read you a quote from your book. Here it is, the government on page 186, you say, "plays off Americans' relative innocence, or ignorance to be more precise. This is probably why geography has not really been taught since World War II -- to keep people in the dark as to where we are blowing things up. Because Enron wants to blow them up. Or Unocal, the great pipeline company, wants a war going some place."

Now, that's what you wrote, you're implying there's a conspiracy that extends even to the classroom where children are not taught geography. That's what you say. That seems to me ludicrous.

VIDAL: Well, it would, but I think you've got to take into account that the people who do the educating are also the people who steal money from us like Enron. Like this administration. They don't want an informed people. If we had...

CARLSON: How does Enron control the schools?

VIDAL: How does Enron control the schools? It siphons up so much money for itself as does the war machine that it's in collusion with.

There is no money -- I go back to 1950, to Harry Truman and the origins of the Cold War, when the country was militarized and we never got it back. We've been at war -- I wrote a little book called "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace." We had been at war for 50 years and we had no proper enemy anywhere unless it was the Soviet Union and we never went to war with them. But one month it's Panama and Noriega. The next month it's Gadhafi. It's the Enemy of the Month Club.

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: Mr. Vidal, I'm sorry to cut you off. We have to take a quick commercial break, another thing we do in the television world. We'll be right back. In a minute we'll ask Gore Vidal who is to blame for 9/11.

Later, we'll debate the grassroots effort to teach France a lesson about who's in charge. Old Europe vs. U.S. consumers? you can tell what side we're on.

And then the author of one of the depressing and funniest best- sellers about marriage. We'll be right back.

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CARVILLE: Welcome back to CROSSFIRE.

Gore Vidal has written about almost every U.S. president usually in fiction, but his latest book is stranger than fiction, just like the Bush Administration. It's called "Dreaming War Blood For Oil and the Chain He-Bush Junta."

Gore Vidal, is in CROSSFIRE from Los Angeles.

CARLSON: Gore Vidal, many critics of the impending war against Iraq is suggesting that the United States is doing the bidding of Israel.

Do you believe that?

VIDAL: It's the first I heard of that.

CARLSON: Well now that you've heard of it, what do you think?

VIDAL: I think the gas and oil business outrank Israel in the minds of the Bush Administration. That's their business. Now, you use the magic word, you don't believe there's a conspiracy? Now that is a word that's been demonized. So anybody who says that there is a conspiracy believes in flying saucers, you know.

CARLSON: That's true, yes.

VIDAL: So I've changed.

CARLSON: Controlling the schools.

VIDAL: I've changed the word for you. The fact that the -- Mr. Bush senior and Mr. Bush junior, Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Gale Norton, secretary of the interior. These are all gas oil people.

Is this a conspiracy? No

Because we don't have conspiracies in America we never have had one. It's a coincidence and I hope from now on that you use that word, coincidence, then we're clear because otherwise I'll say that you believe in flying saucers and you may be taken off at any minute by strangers and aliens from another planet.

CARVILLE: As remedial as I might be, I understand there is a conspiracy and a coincidence. This coincidence that we had, are you saying, sir, that in your opinion this government serves the interest of the oil and gas industry at the expense of American people or if they do is that a coincidence or a conspiracy?

VIDAL: I think there's a lot of conspiracy going on as we can see with the USA patriot act which Congress passed without reading it. Something like 400 pages in which many of our liberties are removed from us. It's a war on the Bill of Rights. It came out 20 days after 9/11. That meant it was already written. You don't write it that fast. So that was in preparation. That's a coincidence that it was just sitting there, suspending (UNINTELLIGIBLE) corpus and all sorts of things that are un-American.

CARVILLE: Let me paraphrase, what your saying, they are using the war of terrorism as a pretext to deny American citizen rights?

VIDAL: The fact that we may be struck again by whoever it was who did it, yes, Mr. Bow tie I do believe it was Osama bin Laden, who was an Arabian.

(CROSSTALK)

VIDAL: All of the people...

CARLSON: Mr. Vidal, Mr. Turtleneck, I if can call you that, you just said a second ago in an indirect way that the patriot act was written before 9/11 but it's just a coincidence. But your implication is the federal government knew that 9/11 was going to happen. That's what you're implying why don't you just say it.

VIDAL: If I thought it, could prove it, I would say it. I suspect it, but I don't really think it. We know nothing. You missed the point to my little book which was I was setting up some of the charges that could be brought against George W. Bush when he comes to be impeached by the House of Representatives. He swore on oath to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States. He swore that as all presidents do. Well the United States is we, the people and Congress assemble. We were not protected at 9/11. He was warned by everybody from Mossad to President Putin in advance. We have stacks of warnings that came in.

CARLSON: OK. Unfortunately.

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: I'm sorry, Mr. Vidal we going to have to end it. We are completely out of time. You live in Italy. Please come and visit us in our country more often. We appreciate having you, thank you very much.

VIDAL: It's always good to have the turtleneck and the bow tie.

CARLSON: Up next! Not only is there foreign policy annoying, their wine is no longer as good as ours. Boycotting France, a grassroots movement. You can sign up here. Later, we'll debate whether marriage makes a mockery of your sex life. We'll be right back.

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SOURCE: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0302/25/cf.00.html

LOL.