The Vanguardia has recently been publishing a lot of lefty America-bashing by international lefties; today they've got one by Robert Fisk, and they've printed a couple more of Fisk's screeds in the last week or so. It's the same-old same-old. Naomi Klein got a couple of chances, too. Now, I do not agree with anything these two people say. I think they're idiots. However, I do not think they are bad people, nor do I think they are dishonest.

I do not feel the same way about Gore Vidal, though. Gore Vidal is scum. Gore Vidal is what you scrape off the bottom of your shoes after a day walking the streets of Barcelona. Gore Vidal hates Jews with a passion. He is a bitchy, catty, gossipy old queen. If you want to be sickened by amorality, read Vidal's autobiography. He got interviewed by Clarín, the Argentinian paper, and the Vangua picked it up and reprinted it on Wednesday. Here are some excerpts.

About conspiracy theories. We're a country full of accidents. We keep assassinating public men and we never find out who did it. It doesn't seem like we care too much. Then people tell me, "Oh, you're a conspiracy theorist," and start laughing hysterically. There's another extraordinary thing that I pointed out recently on television. Look: the first Bush was with the Carlyle petroleum group; the second, with Harkins Oil; Vice-President Cheney, with Halliburton Oil; Gale Norton, the interior Secretary, is also connected to petroleum. Condoleeza Rice is related with Exxon and Texaco, and the boss of the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, was Occidental Petroleum's man. While I was speaking, I saw they were already trying to minimize it. So I said, "I'm not going to say there's a conspiracy. I don't believe in conspiracies. But are you telling me that it is a coincidence that they're leading the US and that we're about to go to war for the oil in Iraq?"

First, we're not going to war for the oil in Iraq. I've already posted about why, as have a lot of other people, and I don't think I need to post it again. Second, it's not unusual that a group of several important people should all have worked in the petroleum industry. It's one of the most important industries of our time. A hundred years ago all politicians had ties with the railroads. Two centuries ago all politicians had ties either with the shipping industry or with plantation agriculture. Third, Vidal shows what a rat he is with his little sally saying that he's not calling it a conspiracy while implying it is. Vidal is accusing the leaders of the United States of conspiring for the benefit of the oil industry. He is saying that they are guilty of war crimes and corruption and abuse of power, since going to war to steal another country's resources is obviously not a just war. But they can't sue him for libel because he weaseled out of making a direct statement of what he is implying. Oh, and fourth, three important men have been assassinated in America since World War II. We know that Oswald killed John Kennedy, Ray killed Martin Luther King, and Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy. Vidal, of course, believes that all three murders were some kind of CIA-Pentagon-Mafia plot. What this means is that he believes that our elected government is a front for the mysterious men who really run things, and that those mysterious men are killers.

Remember: saying "No blood for oil" is saying that the United States, British, Spanish, Italian, Australian, and Eastern European governments are international war criminals. That's a very serious charge to make and I am disgusted that so many people are making it so lightly. But not surprised.

(On September 11) During an hour and a half they knew that the airliners that had taken off from Boston had been hijacked. The FAA followed them on the radar and saw that they were heading for Washington. The FAA has a law saying (my father was once the director and I believe he was the one who made this law) that in case of any kind of hijacking, the air force should intervene within four or five minutes. It didn't. This called my attention. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it was a conspiracy. A conspiracy of whom? Why didn't they intervene?

Vidal weasels out of calling it a conspiracy again while implying that there was one--a conspiracy to destroy the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the World Trade Center that resulted in 3000 deaths, presumably so we'll have an excuse to grab the oil. Vidal is accusing the Bush Administration of being a gang of mass murderers. That is an extraordinary claim and it requires extraordinary evidence, which Vidal does not provide.

Vidal goes on to accuse Bush of not having properly organized investigations into September 11, the Democratic leadership of behaving like sheep, the CIA of conspiring with the Pakistani secret services to funnel money to Mohammed Atta, the whole government of "suspending our civil rights", and the British of being Bush's lapdog for political and economic reasons.

I don't think Vidal is an agent of some kind of international conspiracy to defame America. I think he's just an asshole.