Seven
Awkward Questions
To George Bush
By Michael Moore
06 October, 2003
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. Order a copy of
Dude, Where's My Country?