Dreaming War
Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta
Gore Vidal
December 2002
ISBN: 1560255021
With the Cheney-Bush junta preparing us for a new hot war, Vidal asks whose interests are served by this doctrine of pre-emptive attack. Was Afghanistan turned to rubble to avenge the 3,000 slaughtered on September 11? Or was Osama "chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the frightening logo for our long contemplated invasion and conquest of Afghanistan"? After all, Corporate America has long been excited by Eurasia's mineral wealth.
And whatever happened to Osama? "Once Afghanistan looked to be within the fold, the junta, which had managed with some success to pull off a complex diplomatic-military caper, abruptly replaced Osama, the personification of evil, with Saddam Hussein. This has been hard to explain since there is no US intelligence to connect Iraq with 9/11. Doubtless, 'evidence' is now being invented. But its uphill work, not helped by stories in the US press about the vast oil wealth of Iraq which must, for the sake of the free world, be reassigned to US consortiums."
Vidal conjures up a vision of America in a vengeful mood, where the media is assigned its familiar task of inciting public opinion, where the citizenry are reduced to spear-carrying and the Cheney-Bush junta is the latest, most lethal--and unconstitutional--advocate of Corporate America's Enemy-of-the-Month club.
What readers are saying
"Another deliciously ill-tempered screed from veteran gadfly Vidal, perhaps our fiercest homegrown critic of American imperialism in general and the current administration in particular.... A pleasure for those convinced of the present ruling elite's deep-seated flaws and deeper evils, and tasty food for thought even for the doubtful."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Faithful fans of Vidal will revel in his relentless adoration of Jeffersonian ideals and courageous dissection of the evil roots of American foreign policy."
--Publishers Weekly
"[Dreaming War] makes the compelling case that big business now control the country. The author, in making a clarion call for the people to wrest back control of the government, sees himself, not as a radical revolutionary, but as a loyal patriot attempting to save the nation before it is too late."
--The Black World Today
About the Authors
Gore Vidal is the author of twenty-two novels, five plays, many screenplays, more than 200 essays and a memoir. The Times Literary Supplement (UK) noted that Vidal's United States (Essays 1952-1992) is "one of the great American books of the twentieth century." It won the 1993 National Book Award.
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