Ex-UK minister says
US may have let Sept 11 attacks to happen
AP, London
A former minister in Prime Minister Tony Blair's government suggested in a newspaper piece yesterday that the United States may have knowingly allowed the September 11, 2001, attacks to happen so it would have a pretext for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.Writing in The Guardian, former Environment Minister Michael Meacher said America's air defence response was inexplicably slow the morning four hijacked passenger jets destroyed the World Trade Centre and crashed into the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, killing more than 3,000. "Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence?" he wrote, referring to intelligence clues he said were ignored before the attacks. "Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority?" Meacher, who served as environment minister for six years before being dismissed when Blair reorganised his ministers in June, later told British Broadcasting Corp radio that he didn't believe the US government had planned the attacks. "I don't think that we can conceivably say even that they allowed it, but when it actually happened, it was a very convenient pretext to put in place a plan for an attack on Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which are motivated by the need to get control of the remaining oil supplies in the world," he said. "It was an extraordinarily convenient pretext, that's all I am saying." A call to the US embassy in London went unanswered Saturday. The Guardian quoted an unidentified embassy spokesman as dismissing 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." The charges, the spokesman reportedly said "would be monstrous, and monstrously offensive, if they came from someone serious or credible." A spokesman for Blair said the prime minister did not share Meacher's views "because they are completely wrong and they are views which we would reject utterly." Meacher wrote that the US-led war on terrorism was a "bogus cover" for achieving broad, pre-existing strategic goals, including "a blueprint for US world domination" driven by the desire for greater control of global oil supplies.
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