"Eight months after the bombing, FBI director Robert Mueller could only inform a Senate Committee that US intelligence now 'believes' the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though planned and implemented elsewhere. [Walter Pincus, 'The 9-11 Masterminds may have been in Afghanistan,' Washington Post Weekly, June 10-16.]" Chomsky at <www.zmag.org/chomsky4-30-03.htm>.
Some rightist hacks said Chomsky predicted a "silent genocide" in Afghanistan that didn't take place. Here's his answer:
QUESTION: Professor Chomsky, do you think you overestimated the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan? Pakistan News Service has you saying on a November trip to Pakistan, only ten days before the bombing, the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization had warned that over seven million people would face starvation in Afghanistan if military action was initiated.
CHOMSKY: I wasn't overestimating it. I was quoting the Food and Agricultural Organization.
QUESTION: But you give the impression that the bombing alone would endanger the lives of seven million people.
CHOMSKY: I didn't give that impression at all. What I said is that, before the bombing, there were, according to UN estimates, about five million people facing starvation. According to the New York Times, the effect of the threat of bombing, let alone the bombing, would be to place an additional two and a half million people at risk. They were quoting UN sources. And I quoted them. If it's an overestimate, it's not mine. It's the overestimate of the New York Times, the Food and Agricultural Organization, the World Food Program, and others. There's a separate question: did it happen? Totally separate. Interesting and important question but it's not the basis on which we carry out--
QUESTION: So you were still right to issue the warning--?
CHOMSKY: I was right to quote the warnings of every international authority on the basis of which the actions were undertaken and commentary was made. And, furthermore, I was right to point out the elementary truism that we evaluate the actions, and the commentary on them, on the basis of the expectations on which the actions were taken. Now, there's a separate question -- important separate question: what are the effects? Well, what I said at the same point is: we'll never know.
QUESTION: Well, the effects, according to Oxfam, are that for some the dangers have receded -- for others, they've got worse.
CHOMSKY: Exactly.
QUESTION: It's a mixed and complex picture.
CHOMSKY: Let's first establish the fact, which is elementary, that whatever the consequences are -- and they're important -- they're completely irrelevant to this issue. Okay, having established that, let's look at the consequences. The consequences, first of all, are mixed and, secondly, the point that I made in the book, back in October, is, I believe, correct. They will never be investigated. I hope I'm wrong about that. As I said there, I hope that we will break the historical pattern, a very overwhelming historical pattern, and actually look at the consequences of our own actions. That almost never happens...
On Sat, 3 Jul 2004, Luke Weiger wrote:
> C.G. Estabrook wrote:
>
> > We get to kill people if we suspect their government is not sincere?
> > Robert Mueller, head of the FBI, testifying the summer after 9/11,
> could > not say that he "_knew_ Al Qaeda was responsible."
>
> Where's the quotation?
>
> > The administration was certainly willing to starve many people in >
> Afghanistan to death, as the UN recognized.
>
> What's your evidence, apart from the warnings of some aid workers?
>
> > Part of the reason it didn't happen was the world-wide outcry
> against the vicious plans of the US.
>
> Again, where's your evidence? I'll admit that I was initially worried
> about possible mass starvation in Afghanistan--but folks like Jon
> Chait, who predicted that the invasion would actually help matters,
> proved to be correct.
>