Dude, Where's My Country_ - Michael Moore [6]
The people who run the Carlyle Group are a Who’s Who of past movers and shakers, everyone from Ronald Reagan’s defense secretary, Frank Carlucci, to your dad’s secretary of state, James Baker, to former British Prime Minister John Major.22 Carlucci, the head of Carlyle, also happens to sit on the board of directors of the Middle East Policy Council along with a representative of the bin Laden family business.23
After September 11, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal both ran stories pointing out this strange coincidence. Your first response, Mr. Bush, was to ignore it, hoping, I guess, that the story would just go away. Your father and his buddies at Carlyle did not renounce the bin Laden investment. Your army of pundits went into spin control. They said, we can’t paint these bin Ladens with the same brush we use for Osama. They have disowned Osama! They have nothing to do with him! They hate and despise what he has done! These are the good bin Ladens.
And then the video footage came out. It showed a number of those “good” bin Ladens—including Osama’s mother, a sister and two brothers—with Osama at his son’s wedding just six and a half months before September 11.24 It has been reported in The New Yorker that not only has the family not cut ties to Osama, but they have continued to fund him as they have been doing for years. It was no secret to the CIA that Osama bin Laden had access to his family fortune (his share is estimated to be at least $30 million25), and the bin Ladens, as well as other Saudis, kept Osama and his group, al Qaeda, well funded.26
Mr. Bush, weeks went by after the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, yet your father and his friends at the Carlyle Group refused to buckle in their support for the bin Laden empire.
Finally, nearly two months after the attacks, with more and more people questioning the propriety of the Bush family being in bed with the bin Ladens, your father and the Carlyle Group were pressured into giving the bin Ladens their millions back and asked them to leave the company as investors.27
Why did this take so long?
To make matters worse, it turned out that one of bin Laden’s brothers—Shafiq—was actually at a Carlyle Group business conference in Washington, D.C., the morning of September 11. The day before, at the same conference, your father and Shafiq had been chatting it up with all the other ex-government Carlyle bigwigs.28
Mr. Bush, what is going on here?
You’ve gotten a free ride from the media, though they know everything I have just written to be the truth (and, in fact, I have taken it from the very same mainstream news sources they work for). They seem unwilling or afraid to ask you a simple question: WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?
In case you don’t understand just how bizarre the media’s silence is regarding the Bush-bin Laden connections, let me draw an analogy to how the press or Congress may have handled something like this if the same shoe had been on the Clinton foot. If, after the terrorist attack on the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, it was revealed that President Bill Clinton and his family had financial dealings with Timothy McVeigh’s family, what do you think your Republican Party and the media would have done with that one? Do you think at least a couple of questions might have been asked, like, “What is THAT all about?” Be honest, you know the answer. They would have asked more than a couple of questions. They would have skinned Clinton alive and thrown what was left of his carcass in Gitmo.
So, what is this all about, Mr. Bush? We have a right to know.
Question #2: What is the “special relationship” between the Bushes and the Saudi royal family?
Mr. Bush, the bin Ladens are not the only Saudis with whom you and your family have a close personal relationship. The entire royal family seems to be indebted to you—or is it the other way around?
The number-one supplier of oil to the U.S.