[news] Imperial America: Gore Vidal Reflects on the United States of Amnesia

[Resist!ca]

Democracy Now transcript June 4th, 2004 "Nowadays, if your country is attacked, you immediately get a contract to rebuild something. Then perhaps you are a member of the cabinet who knocks down cities, and then you go over to the vice president and get his company, Halliburton, to rebuild them with treasury money. So, I mean, you can see them--"Hey, Rumsfeld, I want to build -- you know, I have this dream" -- you can hear this coming from one of them. "I want a railroad station right in the center of Baghdad. I mean, they need it. They need an old fashioned one with towers on it. Something beautiful. And no cement block. I want brick." You can hear them at this. And then we rebuild it. So, between the destructiveness and all of the lies that are told, there is all of the corruption. In a proper country, the corruption would be reported. You can't find it. Then the president -- well, he's like Lyndon Johnson. If you remember toward the end of Lyndon Johnson's reign and the Vietnam War was going, he couldn't speak anywhere except to Army bases. Now we have this little terrier marching around, "Yap, yap, yap, yap. I'm a wartime president. I'm a wartime president. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Just like the big guys."-- Gore Vidal

URL: http://resist.ca/story/2004/10/12/12123/822