- Former Government minister Michael Meacher has claimed
that the war on terrorism is a "political smokescreen" allowing
the US to dominate the world and its oil supplies.
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- Mr Meacher, who was environment minister for six years
until June, argued in a national newspaper that the US knew in advance
of the September 11 attacks but did not act for strategic reasons.
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- It has since made "no serious attempt" to catch
al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, he added.
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- His comments provoked a strong reaction from the US embassy
in London. A spokesman said: "Mr Meacher's fantastic allegations -
especially his assertion that the US government knowingly stood by while
terrorists killed some 3,000 innocents in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia
- would be monstrous, and monstrously offensive, if they came from someone
serious or credible."
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- Mr Meacher, MP for Oldham, claimed that "the truth
may well be a great deal murkier", citing a document called Rebuilding
America's Defences, written in September 2000 by neo-conservative think
tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which was set up by a
group including Dick Cheney (George Bush's vice president), Donald Rumsfeld
(defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (deputy defence secretary) and Lewis
Libby (Mr Cheney's chief of staff).
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- The PNAC plan "is a blueprint for US world domination"
which "provides a much better explanation of what happened before,
during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis", he
wrote.
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- "From this it seems that the so-called `war on terrorism'
is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical
objectives."
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- He said the PNAC document stated that making the US "tomorrow's
dominant force" would be a long process without "some catalysing
event - like a new Pearl Harbour".
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- Mr Meacher listed a number of newspaper articles detailing
intelligence the US was said to be in possession of which warned of the
September 11 attacks before they happened.
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- He also questioned why no fighter planes were scrambled
until after the third plane had crashed into the Pentagon, asking: "Was
this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant
of, the evidence? Or could US security operations have been deliberately
stood down on September 11?"
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- Mr Meacher concluded that the "overriding motivation
for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning
to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies".
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- By 2010, he said, Muslim countries will control as much
as 60 per cent of the world's oil production and 95 per cent of its global
export capacity.
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- http://www.itv.com/news/119348.html
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