Jewish World Review June 27, 2002 / 17 Tamuz, 5762

Bob Tyrrell

Bob Greene
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports

The perfect book for Hillary


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | It is summer reading time, and I have a perfect book for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to bring to Martha's Vineyard, that posh New York resort where she and husband Bill always find a nice captain of industry to loan them a cottage with servants and golf clubs.

The book is a modern French masterpiece, "L' Effroyable Imposture," by France's next Jean-Paul Sartre, M. Thierry Meyssan, a sleepy-eyed moderate leftist, whose title, translated into English, reads, "The Horrifying Fraud."

It is not a book about the Clintons. Rather, it is a book about a topic Hillary herself introduced to America, the topic of "right-wing conspiracy."

When first she mentioned that a conspiracy of conservatives was behind her husband's numerous scrapes with the law and with scandal in general, the press was dubious and the public bemused. Then gradual repetition of the conspiracy theory began to take hold.

Columnists discovered that Linda Tripp had been a Republican, that Lucianne Goldberg once worked somehow for Richard Nixon, that Kathleen Willey and Paula Corbin Jones -- though Democrats -- spent a lot of time with Republicans, and Willey's dead cat could have died by natural causes.

Soon, reliable sources such as James Carville and David Brock were telling all. They knew that almost everyone who spoke ill of the Clintons had one thing in common -- to wit, they were not party-line Democrats. Nor had any contributed to any of the Clintons' political campaigns. Some had military backgrounds.

M. Meyssan's book makes many useful contributions to the Clintons' theory of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" here in America. "The Horrifying Fraud" argues that the Sept. 11 attacks on America were carried out not by Islamic fundamentalists or by any foreigners at all. The attacks were the work of a right-wing conspiracy working within the American government. Who doubts that when Hillary gets her copy she will turn immediately to the index to see if Richard Scaife is mentioned or Lucianne?

By the way, this is no marginal book written by a writer on the fringes of French society. It has sold over 200,000 copies in France. It stands atop the French best-seller list, shouting, "Hillary was right." And the argument is exquisite, offering intellectual complexity that no Yankee Clintonite can match.

According to M. Meyssan, Lucianne's agents inside the government were threatening to overthrow the Bush administration by a coup (America's first ever) if he did not agree to expand the military budget and declare war against Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which countries have gotten on the right's nerves. Oil interests were also at issue, and in the case of Afghanistan, perhaps, rugs.

To increase pressure on the Bush administration and possibly avoid the necessity of a coup (America's first ever), the right-wingers (or should we call them Republicans?) needed a provocation for the administration to attack Afghanistan and Iraq, and so they hit the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Then they blamed the whole thing on the otherwise irreproachable Osama bin Laden.

The attack went like this. The right-wing conspiracists laid hands on a missile and fired it into the Pentagon. As for the planes that we all saw hit the World Trade Center, they were programmed to hit the towers. Apparently, there were no pilots. Thus, Osama bid Laden could not possibly have been involved, and all decent Americans owe him an apology. We should give him his caves back, and even the bats.

The argument does leave some unanswered questions. One is, where is that plane that the right-wingers would have us believe hit the Pentagon? It was an American Airlines plane. Could American Airlines be involved in the plot? That is a publicly held company. And where are the passengers on the flight that M. Meyssan tells us never hit the Pentagon?

Possibly these questions will be answered by the time the American edition of this useful French contribution to the study of right-wing conspiracies hits the country. It is being translated into English and several other languages for distribution in 16 countries.

I hope the American edition will have an introduction by a knowledgeable student of the "vast-right wing conspiracy," for instance former Clinton White House aide Sidney Blumenthal. Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe will surely be asked to do a blurb. And it is always possible that Hillary might, too. You can be sure that in a matter of weeks she will have read it cover to cover. I am told she reads French and 12 other languages.

Enjoy this writer's work? Why not sign-up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


JWR contributor Bob Tyrrell is editor in chief of The American Spectator. Comment by clicking here.

06/20/02: To say that they were ordinary is not to slight them
06/13/02: Daschle must begin to act like an adult
06/06/02: Lack of "intelligence" --- and sheer stupidity
05/30/02: Revealing a carefully guarded media secret
05/23/02: In these times, thank Heaven for Clinton!
05/16/02: Fast Times at the Church of the Nativity
05/09/02: "Name the Prettiest Suicide Bomber"
05/02/02: Vindication for the Boy Scouts
04/25/02: A topic almost no other columnist will touch
04/18/02: 'Conventional Wisdom' --- and those who defy it
04/11/02: Let the Sun shine in
04/05/02: Hooded men of color in sheets
04/01/02: A McCain-Feingold Act for Hollywood
03/21/02: Yakkin' on Yates
03/15/02: No role for Paul Volcker in Enron: the movie
03/07/02: My membership in the Communist Party U.S.A.
02/27/02: This award is bestowed by 'contrarians'
02/21/02: Mike Tyson: Made for Washington?
02/14/02: Enron as underdog?
02/07/02: Freed from the presence of money -- hard or soft -- most politicians would be just as bad
01/31/02: Needed: Bush to make a preemptive strike against his enemies …. Ones who'd like to see him fail even during war
01/24/02: Hucksters will move on to make their next marks
01/17/02: Debonair prez should begin to do the High Life
01/10/02: Move over Twinkies --- "the acne medicine made him do it!"
01/03/02: Leaving the Nazis looking comparatively humane
12/27/01: A "self-made journalist"
12/20/01: Calamities and unanticipated benefits
12/13/01: America's grief ought not to give comfort to those who caused it
12/06/01: Leahy, the strict civil libertarian!? A short-term exploiter of the Constitution is more like it
11/29/01: Welcome to Afghan, Maryland?
11/26/01: So, why don't more folks hate us?
11/15/01: America's quagmire and other certainties
11/09/01: No longer the smug statists, the prodigal Keynesians?
11/01/01: The New Seriousness
10/25/01: Bright lights and the Taliban
10/18/01: Is bin-Laden propaganda from Western intelligence?
10/12/01: No yellow ribbons
10/05/01: Bubba's back --- again!
09/28/01: Exposing peacetime's frauds
09/21/01: So protected, we're vulnerable
09/14/01: At Barbara Olson's home
09/11/01: Duh! All conservatives are racists
08/31/01: Arafat's terrorists have created their own hell
08/24/01: Time for some political prophecy
08/16/01: They claim to be doing so much good
08/10/01: Visiting the source of the White House braintrust
08/03/01: Morality and reality
07/31/01: Blinded by success?
07/24/01: The latest Kennedy capitulation in Massachusetts
07/13/01: Talk about tawdry
07/06/01: Delighting in the Dictator
06/29/01: The Godphobes
06/21/01: Fashionable Washington is sempiternally in a stew
06/15/01: The limits of hypocrisy
06/08/01: Flagging our general apathy

© 2001, Creators Syndicate