Vidal: Bush ended US as a republic

Gore Vidal, US novelist, historian and social critic says the Bush regime has killed all of the constitutional links that made the US a republic.

On early Friday morning Iran time, in an exclusive interview with Press TV, Vidal said that President Bush has rid the country of the Bill of Rights, habeas corpus and the entire legacy of the Magna Carta in the name of war on terror.

He also criticized the House of Representatives for not impeaching President Bush, over a wide array of subjects such as disclosure of CIA agent Valerie Plame's covert status. Vidal did however single out Rep. Dennis Kuchinich for drawing up articles of impeachment against the president.

Vidal, long strongly critical of the Bush administration, said the administration has both an an explicit and covert expansionist agenda.

In his writings he has made the assessment that for several years, the administration and its associates, many of whom are magnets in the oil and gas industry have had clear aims to control the oil of Central Asia which is to follow on the heels of gaining effective control of the oil of the Persian Gulf--a project that took a new twist with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1991.

That event inadvertently served as the basis for the neo-conservative American Project for the 21st Century document and policy guideline that has been the hallmark of the Bush-Cheney years.

Regarding the September 11, 2001 attacks, Vidal has written the American intelligence community clearly warned it was coming but the event provided political cover and pretext for the plans that the administration already had in place for invading Iraq--plans that can be traced to the waning days of the first Bush family presidency. Press TV