>>Press Clips Laundering the 'Truth' 'The Nation'
Defuses a French Bombshell by Cynthia Cotts
Accordin g to the back cover of Forbidden Truth, a bestseller published in France last fall and released in this country last week, a round of "secret diplomacy between the Bush administration and the Taliban" may have provoked Osama bin Laden into launching the September 11 attacks.
As proof, authors Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie point to a July 2001 meeting of a UN initiative known as Six Plus Two, formed
to discuss Afghanistan's future and to offer incentives for building a Central Asian oil pipeline. The group that met in July included two former U.S. ambassadors, ostensibly chosen to float ideas that could not be traced to the U.S. government. At the meeting, according to one participant, one of the Americans informed the group, "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs." And when news of this unusual military
threat reached bin Laden, the authors imply, he launched a preemptive strike on the U.S.
With an outrageous premise like that, it's no wonder that chapter six of Forbidden Truth has been touted as the smoking gun that proves Bush's indirect responsibility for 9-11-or that Nation Books, the publishing arm of The Nation, has just published the book in English<<
What's outrageous about the premise is the idea that a couple former ambassadors meeting with Taliban were going to make OBL feel more threatened than he already was. Some in the Taliban wanted him dead. The Northern Alliance wanted him dead. The Russians wanted him dead. And the Iranians wanted him dead. Oh, and the US wanted him dead and had already launched overt (cruise missiles) and covert campaigns against him (there was at least one documented assassination attempt that ended in open fighting with Al Qaeda where OBL was which then led to his isolation in Afghanistan, probably for his own protection--you can get info. like this from the CIA website for crying out loud).
What's is also outrageous is Corn wasted space in the Nation doing non-journalism to rebuke stuff he thinks is beneath the current level of journalism (which isn't saying much). And now Cotts wastes even more space doing a piece about his piece about a book neither takes seriously anyway. Why not worry about the things you can do something about?
Charles J
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