As proof, authors Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié point to a July 2001 meeting of a UN initiative known as Six Plus Two, formed to discuss Afghanistan's future and to offer incentives for building a Central Asian oil pipeline. The group that met in July included two former U.S. ambassadors, ostensibly chosen to float ideas that could not be traced to the U.S. government. At the meeting, according to one participant, one of the Americans informed the group, "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs." And when news of this unusual military threat reached bin Laden, the authors imply, he launched a preemptive strike on the U.S.
With an outrageous premise like that, it's no wonder that chapter six of Forbidden Truth has been touted as the smoking gun that proves Bush's indirect responsibility for 9-11—or that Nation Books, the publishing arm of The Nation, has just published the book in English. What's really interesting is that after The Nation's hard-nosed Washington editor, David Corn, denounced the authors as conspiracy theorists, Nation Books neatly excised the smoking-gun allegations from the text.
The smoking-gun claim first appeared in the foreword of the book's original edition, in which the authors dubbed the 9-11 attacks "a foreseeable" and "tragic" "outcome" of the UN initiative. But the foreword in the Nation Books edition merely states that the 9-11 attacks were "possibly the outcome" of the UN initiative, and soberly calls for "further investigation." A similar text massage was performed at the end of chapter six.
Here's an exchange between Corn and his detractors that the Instapundit highlighted the other day, and here's a story from "The American Prospect" that comprehensively debunks the "Afghanistan attack was about oil" thesis.
