Letters to the Editor
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Sorry but I'm not impressed....
Yeah, right: a bunch of ragheads in caves brought down the towers. Woo-hoo! I believe in Tinkerbell and the tooth fairy too. This book smacks of more misinformation to further confuse info weary Americans who are already smothered under a mountain of lies and propaganda regarding the debacle of 9-11. There's no mentioning of the 5 absolutely joyous Israeli Mossad spies filming the tower's collapse-and their apprehension and release is not mentioned. Nor a word about the towers clearly being brought down via controlled demolition as numerous building demolition experts have gone on the record saying. There is mounting evidence that 9-11 was not done by Arab extremists, but rather was done by elements within our own government to create the necessary terrorism hysteria to pass the "Patriot Act", roll back our civil liberties, invade Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and finally Iran, all the while loudly trumpeting that anybody who questions Bush/cheney isn't patriotic and should be wiretapped and banned from flying on an airplane. I'm sure many of you have heard about the neo-con "Project for a New American Century", yes? Google it, it's rather disturbing reading. Did you know that several of the supposedly dead hi-jackers from 9-11 have shown up alive and well living with their families in the Middle East? Kinda makes you wonder about the 9-11 "Truth" Commission, doesn't it? There is a great site that is worth visiting that itemizes numerous lies and inconsistencies in the official 9-11 story. Scholars for 9-11 truth is doing some great research (http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/), please check it if you're at all interested. No, I'm not grinding my axe, just questioning the official government party line which this book doesn't seem to be doing enough of. From this article I don't think the author Wright is on the right track about what really happened on 9-11.
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Baseless propaganda
Let me guess: There's a blurb of glowing praise from CNN "terrorism expert" Peter Bergen on the back?
This stuff smacks of propagandist drivel. If you want to know anything remotely true about 9/11, read one of these books instead:
The New Pearl Harbor by David Ray Griffin
The War on Truth by Nafeez Ahmed
America's "War on Terrorism" by Michel Chossudovsky
9/11 Synthetic Terror by Webster Tarpley
Towers of Deception by Barrie Zwicker
Please stop patronizing CIA-inspired fiction by people like Lawrence Wright. Al-Qaeda was supported by the CIA via the Pakistani ISI, and the American government continues to support Islamic militants. 9/11 was not blowback for misguided foreign policy. 9/11 was a continuation of misguided domestic policy. 9/11 was an inside job. Until that fact becomes fact, America will continue its tap dance into fascism.
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Osama bin Laden's letter to America
For those interested in al-Qaeda’s reason for attacking America (and by association, the UK, Spain, and other members of the “coalition of the willing”), why not read bin Laden’s own words in his “Letter to America” written in 2002:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,845725,00.html
Like Wright states, they have two objectives:
1) to change our foreign policies and seek revenge for perceived injustices (support for Israel and its oppression of the Palestinians, crippling sanctions against Iraq, bombing of Afghanistan, support of corrupt monarchs and dictators in the Arab world, building of U.S. military bases throughout the region, exploitation of oil at unfair prices, etc.); and
2) they want us to become Muslim (albeit, their fanatic and unbending version of Islam) and give up our ungodly ways (i.e., atheism, gambling, alcohol and drug abuse, extramarital sex, using women as sexual objects for marketing, homosexuality, usury/interest, environmental destruction, unjust distribution of wealth, military aggression, hypocrisy, racism, and the list goes on).
If you want to defeat the enemy, you must first understand him, his motivations and goals.
One salient feature of Wright’s investigation is the bit about the Lebanese-American CIA agent Ali Soufan and his successful tactics in extracting information about terrorist plots. Why wasn’t that sort of nuanced, intelligent strategy used more extensively? Really, as soon as the tragedy of 9/11 happened, we should have addressed the threat of terror as a *law enforcement* issue, not a war. But of course, a long “war on terror” perfectly suited Bush’s nefarious plans for a re-shaping of the Middle East, so it was two wars we got (and now maybe a third with Iran and/or Syria).
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Bin Laden hates US policies only inasmuch as they reflect US values
"whether the al-Qaida faithful hate America for its freedoms or for its policies. Wright's work reveals that the answer, clearly, is both... Bin Laden often emphasized his objection to the presence of U.S. troops on the Arabian peninsula, beginning with the Gulf War. He regularly demonized Israel and the United States as its prime benefactor."
I don't think that follows, though. If you look at what he actually says, Bin Laden's specific objection to US troops in the Holy Land was that they included women, Jews, and other hated infidels, and his specific objection to Israel is, well, that it exists. It's way too simplistic to reduce either to "US policies". When the hatred is actually directed at our policy of having a multi-denominational military of both genders and our policy of not wanting the Holocaust to happen again, why, that's also about hating our freedoms and values.
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Did he really fight? Not what I read
The organization arose from the rubble of the Afghan-Soviet war, where bin Laden had made his name among the fighting faithful.
I've read that what he made his name for mostly was riding around on a donkey with a video camera documenting how his cash was being spent. The mujahedin didn't like that kind of supervision apparently. I guess that's why he got on better with the Taliban than the mujahedin.
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By the way, a fine point this article blurs
The mujadehin who fought the Soviets were not the same people as the Taliban who provided training bases for Al Qaeda. The core membership of the Taliban came from the refugee camps in Pakistan. Many of them had never seen Afghanistan before they drove in to drive the mujahedin out.
Bin Laden sided with the Taliban in that conflict, which meant that Al Qaeda ended up the enemy of the old anti-Soviet mujahedin.
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Smells like bullshit.
The full story of how America's intelligence agencies failed to stop 19 men from turning four commercial jetliners into precision missiles may never be known.
Mm hmm. How many countries forwarded warnings of the precise attack to the US? Six? Seven? Remember the FBI agents who tried to warn their (alleged) superiors about Arabs @ flying schools..?
Ever wonder why Dubya had to have Cheney at his side when he was dragged, kicking and screaming, to testify (not under oath?!) before the 9/11 Cover Up Commission?
I, too, have wondered about those five Mossad agents arrested on 9/11/01 after being witnessed videotaping and celebrating the WTC collapses.
The official story is bullshit. This book sounds like bullshit. Aviation fuel doesn't cause structural steel to soften or whatever the magic-physics explantion was.
EXAMINE THE FACTS. We've been set up and spiked like a volleyball. Let's waterboard Cheney and get some real information out of the real President.