I'm giving this book five stars because I think folks should read it and really analyze it. I've avoided 9-11 books for some time now and carefully picked this puppy because it had been recommended by my Left-leaning friends who are generally sober and sensible. (Later I planned on reading one recommended by equivalent right-leaners).

Anyway, this read left my head spinning and had I been taking notes on the endless small quirky errors and minor logical lapses that added up to one increasing declension from an argumentative True North I would have ended up with more notes than book.

For one the author seems to take his information from anywhere that gives him what he wants--the US is backing this or that insurgency because a reporter for the Guardian says so; middle-level officials in French intelligence have the full story (as if there can't be bias there); boxes of military hardware in Albanian terrorist hands--one of several thousand smoking guns--are stamped Made in US according to what, hearsay, and this is proof of US backing. One beaut is the US was planning on invading Afghanistan anyway in 2001 with the help of India, Iran (!) and 17,000 Russian troops. Where did that dandy plan go after 9-11? The author doesn't bother to tell us and I'm left wondering what the hell is going on and on top of that he's already asserted that we wanted to use Afghanistan as a base for directing trouble at Iran. So Iran was going to help the US topple the Taliban so we could topple the Iranian government? How else am I supposed to read that?

Then there's the pipeline--the alleged US goal in Afghanistan. The pipeline would send oil from former Soviet republics to China and India and even the Saudis would benefit. How is that in the national interest? (Oh, he says "Enron" enough times here that I'm not supposed to think about that I guess) And why would Russia--standing to lose oil revenue if the pipeline was built--not just support but contribute troops to this original planned invasion? Ditto with Iran? Hey wait, the Afghan pipeline was to avoid building through Iran and Iran is helping with plans to topple the Taliban? What?

Supporting the Taliban?--could it be that the Taliban was seen as the only indigenous group capable of bringing any amount of stability to Afghanistan. Oh, that's only so the pipeline could be built. Wait, we're supporting and fighting the Taliban simultaneously. Aaargh!!!

This goes on and on and on through the book and only gets better as the reader nears 9-11. Confusion and stupidity in the government I can accept, and anyone with any experience of big governments should expect nothing less. Those parts of the book I can live with to a degree as his lack of solid argument matches speed with my intuition here. I'll also add the author frequently betrays a complete lack of knowledge of how the military operates too. Curiously, same with my Left-leaning friends that recommended this to me, in fact their ignorance in this realm is often boggling. I grew up in a military family and know that military jargon is often wildly misunderstood by academics who frequently hate the military so much they never actually bother to learn anything about it. Incredibly, this ignorance is often seen as a badge of honor among peers.

If you made up your mind ages ago that the US was the Evil Empire (and simultaneously and incongruously the Incompetent Empire) then you'd traipse through a book like this uncritically--heck, it's telling you everything you want to hear no doubt. The author seems to count on that; the inconsistencies are glossed over with the idea that no one after the true meat here will care much, and they won't will they? I went in with no opinions and after 50 pages felt like I was reading a book on flying saucers. I was hoping for some good tight stuff that could persuade me of something.

By the way, I've known a few "Intelligence" people and no two can agree on much of anything and if you look hard enough you'll find one that will tell you what you want to hear, privately of course. Being a spook is no badge of authority and janitors at the Smithsonian can easily give you an earful on what an inefficient mess Washington is.

And by the way too, I'm not for or against any theories about 9-11 and this is not a critique of the Damn the Gummint point of view so save your oft-misused "Unhelpful" votes and the inevitable comment (that I often see on Amazon when the reviewer is critiquing Leftist things)that I'm some "neo-con in sheep's clothing." I'd just like to encounter some sense here, not academics Googling their research and throwing words together to make a nice Agenda Pie, or school-kids who don't know anything about anything claiming deepest knowledge of either the inner workings of the New World Order or even basic engineering. I avoided 9-11 discussion because I knew, from previous experience with big nasty events, that every charlatan, witch-hunter, ax-grinder, and nitwit would be all over it for years and I'd have to wait a long time for that noxious cloud of "gas" and "debris" to settle.

War on Truth? Heck!

I'm giving this book five stars because I think folks should read it and really analyze it. I've avoided 9-11 books for some time now and carefully picked this puppy because it had been recommended by my Left-leaning friends who are generally sober and sensible. (Later I planned on reading one recommended by equivalent right-leaners).

Anyway, this read left my head spinning and had I been taking notes on the endless small quirky errors and minor logical lapses that added up to one increasing declension from an argumentative True North I would have ended up with more notes than book.

For one the author seems to take his information from anywhere that gives him what he wants--the US is backing this or that insurgency because a reporter for the Guardian says so; middle-level officials in French intelligence have the full story (as if there can't be bias there); boxes of military hardware in Albanian terrorist hands--one of several thousand smoking guns--are stamped Made in US according to what, hearsay, and this is proof of US backing. One beaut is the US was planning on invading Afghanistan anyway in 2001 with the help of India, Iran (!) and 17,000 Russian troops. Where did that dandy plan go after 9-11? The author doesn't bother to tell us and I'm left wondering what the hell is going on and on top of that he's already asserted that we wanted to use Afghanistan as a base for directing trouble at Iran. So Iran was going to help the US topple the Taliban so we could topple the Iranian government? How else am I supposed to read that?

Then there's the pipeline--the alleged US goal in Afghanistan. The pipeline would send oil from former Soviet republics to China and India and even the Saudis would benefit. How is that in the national interest? (Oh, he says "Enron" enough times here that I'm not supposed to think about that I guess) And why would Russia--standing to lose oil revenue if the pipeline was built--not just support but contribute troops to this original planned invasion? Ditto with Iran? Hey wait, the Afghan pipeline was to avoid building through Iran and Iran is helping with plans to topple the Taliban? What?

Supporting the Taliban?--could it be that the Taliban was seen as the only indigenous group capable of bringing any amount of stability to Afghanistan. Oh, that's only so the pipeline could be built. Wait, we're supporting and fighting the Taliban simultaneously. Aaargh!!!

This goes on and on and on through the book and only gets better as the reader nears 9-11. Confusion and stupidity in the government I can accept, and anyone with any experience of big governments should expect nothing less. Those parts of the book I can live with to a degree as his lack of solid argument matches speed with my intuition here. I'll also add the author frequently betrays a complete lack of knowledge of how the military operates too. Curiously, same with my Left-leaning friends that recommended this to me, in fact their ignorance in this realm is often boggling. I grew up in a military family and know that military jargon is often wildly misunderstood by academics who frequently hate the military so much they never actually bother to learn anything about it. Incredibly, this ignorance is often seen as a badge of honor among peers.

If you made up your mind ages ago that the US was the Evil Empire (and simultaneously and incongruously the Incompetent Empire) then you'd traipse through a book like this uncritically--heck, it's telling you everything you want to hear no doubt. The author seems to count on that; the inconsistencies are glossed over with the idea that no one after the true meat here will care much, and they won't will they? I went in with no opinions and after 50 pages felt like I was reading a book on flying saucers. I was hoping for some good tight stuff that could persuade me of something.

By the way, I've known a few "Intelligence" people and no two can agree on much of anything and if you look hard enough you'll find one that will tell you what you want to hear, privately of course. Being a spook is no badge of authority and janitors at the Smithsonian can easily give you an earful on what an inefficient mess Washington is.

And by the way too, I'm not for or against any theories about 9-11 and this is not a critique of the Damn the Gummint point of view so save your oft-misused "Unhelpful" votes and the inevitable comment (that I often see on Amazon when the reviewer is critiquing Leftist things)that I'm some "neo-con in sheep's clothing." I'd just like to encounter some sense here, not academics Googling their research and throwing words together to make a nice Agenda Pie, or school-kids who don't know anything about anything claiming deepest knowledge of either the inner workings of the New World Order or even basic engineering. I avoided 9-11 discussion because I knew, from previous experience with big nasty events, that every charlatan, witch-hunter, ax-grinder, and nitwit would be all over it for years and I'd have to wait a long time for that noxious cloud of "gas" and "debris" to settle.

War on Truth? Heck!

This fascinating book provides evidence that undermines the usual story of 9/11. Ahmed examines the `war on terror', the alleged intelligence and air defence failures of 9/11, the 9/11 National Commission inquiry, and the US ruling class's strategy for world domination.



The US state has run Al-Qaeda assets for covert terrorist operations. It used Al-Qaeda against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, against Russia in Chechnya and against Yugoslavia in the Balkans. Between 1992 and 1995, US planes flew 10,000 mujehadin fighters into Bosnia to fight alongside Bosnian Muslims.



In 1998, the US State Department described the Kosovo Liberation Army as a terrorist organisation funded and trained by Al-Qaeda. Yet the US state, through the CIA, and the British state, through the SAS, then funded, trained and backed the KLA when NATO illegally attacked Yugoslavia.



US investigators knew that Osama bin Laden was involved in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Yet the CIA and MI6 played down the threat from Al-Qaeda. In 1996, MI6 funded an Al-Qaeda assassination attempt on Colonel Gadaffi of Libya, which killed six civilians.



The US state is still protecting bin Laden and his sponsors the Pakistani and Saudi states. It only pretends to crack down on Al-Qaeda and to press Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to stop backing Al-Qaeda. It is using Al-Qaeda to destabilise China and India.



The US and British states both made agreements with Al Qaeda that it would only conduct its terrorist activities abroad. But this backfired, resulting in the slaughter of innocent New Yorkers on 9/11 and innocent Londoners on 7/7.



The US state needed a new Pearl Harbor. The Project for a New American Century said in 2000, "Any serious effort at transformation must occur within the larger framework of US national security strategy, military missions and defense budgets ... Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalysing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."



As Jane's Intelligence Digest noted, "given the detailed intelligence ... and the fact that Bin Laden was making very clear threats to launch further strikes against US targets - it seems bizarre, to say the least, that no high-level political decision was taken to focus US intelligence efforts on Al-Qaeda and its international network." Ahmed observes that on 9/11 the White House systematically violated standard air force response procedures when at 9.25 am it ordered an unprecedented national stand down of all aircraft. Why?



How can we trust states that sponsor terrorism to defeat it? If we want to be safe at home we must stop the British state from supporting terrorism abroad.

This fascinating book provides evidence that undermines the usual story of 9/11. Ahmed examines the `war on terror', the alleged intelligence and air defence failures of 9/11, the 9/11 National Commission inquiry, and the US ruling class's strategy for world domination.

The US state has run Al-Qaeda assets for covert terrorist operations. It used Al-Qaeda against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, against Russia in Chechnya and against Yugoslavia in the Balkans. Between 1992 and 1995, US planes flew 10,000 mujehadin fighters into Bosnia to fight alongside Bosnian Muslims.

In 1998, the US State Department described the Kosovo Liberation Army as a terrorist organisation funded and trained by Al-Qaeda. Yet the US state, through the CIA, and the British state, through the SAS, then funded, trained and backed the KLA when NATO illegally attacked Yugoslavia.

US investigators knew that Osama bin Laden was involved in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Yet the CIA and MI6 played down the threat from Al-Qaeda. In 1996, MI6 funded an Al-Qaeda assassination attempt on Colonel Gadaffi of Libya, which killed six civilians.

The US state is still protecting bin Laden and his sponsors the Pakistani and Saudi states. It only pretends to crack down on Al-Qaeda and to press Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to stop backing Al-Qaeda. It is using Al-Qaeda to destabilise China and India.

The US and British states both made agreements with Al Qaeda that it would only conduct its terrorist activities abroad. But this backfired, resulting in the slaughter of innocent New Yorkers on 9/11 and innocent Londoners on 7/7.

The US state needed a new Pearl Harbor. The Project for a New American Century said in 2000, "Any serious effort at transformation must occur within the larger framework of US national security strategy, military missions and defense budgets ... Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalysing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."

As Jane's Intelligence Digest noted, "given the detailed intelligence ... and the fact that Bin Laden was making very clear threats to launch further strikes against US targets - it seems bizarre, to say the least, that no high-level political decision was taken to focus US intelligence efforts on Al-Qaeda and its international network." Ahmed observes that on 9/11 the White House systematically violated standard air force response procedures when at 9.25 am it ordered an unprecedented national stand down of all aircraft. Why?

How can we trust states that sponsor terrorism to defeat it? If we want to be safe at home we must stop the British state from supporting terrorism abroad.

The book contains a wealth of data about the links between US intelligence and Al Qaeda. Much of the information suggests that the US intelligence has been behind the events of 9/11, yet the author falls short of making this conclusion and does not address the lack of hard evidence supporting the official conspiracy theory regarding the 19 hijackers and Osama bin Laden's authorship of these events. More generally, the author does not address the fact that international terrorism is a totally marginal issue in international affairs, used by States to justify increased police and military powers. In comparison to real international scourges, terrorism is entirely marginal. Two figures suffice to demonstrate this fact. About 15 times more people die yearly from snake bites worldwide then from terrorism. About 1000 times more people die from common murder in the United States and Europe than from terror acts. The title of Ahmed's book is thus misleading. However, I gave the book nevertheless 4 stars because the facts contained in the book are very interesting and may be considered reliable.

There have been a number of conspirachy theories trying to pin 9/11 on the US government itself. This book, skirting the paranoid versions of such a thesis with some careful research into the evidence of contradictions in standard accounts, manages to raise some very disturbing questions with the starkest question of all: what really did happen, and how do we explain the blatant anomalies in the record?

Nafeez Ahmed has done what the corporate news media and our public officials have failed to do: offer us a plausible account of how and why America was attacked on September 11, 2001. "It has been said that the intelligence agencies have to be right 100 percent of the time and the terrorists only have to get lucky once," observed Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband died in the WTC. "This explanation for the devastating attacks of September 11th, simple on its face, is wrong in its value. Because the 9/11 terrorists were not just lucky once: they were lucky over and over again." The War on Truth tells us why.

This book is a sequel to author's "War on Freedom".Contains facts which are undoubtedly explosive,disturbing.Author says American-led 'war on terror'is a colossal fraud enacted on a global scale.

There was American-Al Qaeda alliance in Balkans during Yugoslavian civilwar.From 1992-95 Pentagon assisted the movement of thousands of Al Qaeda men to fight along side Bosnian Muslims against Serbs.Arms for fighting this war was arranged by the intelligence agencies of US,Turkey,Iran and funelled through Croatia.During Kosovan war Anglo-American special forces trained ,armed KLA[Kosovo Liberation Army].Training continued despite the demise of Serbia's Milosevic regime.

US intelligence agencies deliberately fouled up chances to apprehend Al Qaeda supremo .In 1996 bin Laden was allowed to go to Afghanistan when Sudanese authorities were willing to turn him over.Similiarly other Al Qaeda activists responsible for 1998 US Embassy bombings in Nairobi ,Kenya were allowed to go scotfree.Instead of seizing these criminals US warplanes bombed Al-Shifa Pharmaceutical complex alleging that plant was manufacturing chemical weapons for Al Qaeda.To the contrary we know the plant was producing vaccines and had a contract for supplying to the UN.

In Oct 2001 Anglo-American forces invaded Afghanistan.Osama and his associates were again allowed to escape after coalition forces cornered him in Tora Bora caves.Further author talks about exfiltration of Taliban Al Qaeda elements from Kunduz during Afghan campaign.Pakis airlifted them to Peshawar with American connivance who threw open for this purpose 'special air corridor'.

Despite high-flown rhetoric associated with 'War on Terror'West has secretly co-opted,connived with Al-Qaeda.Why is this so?.Ostensibly to secure and expand its vital intersts which has grown to include Balkans ,CentralAsia.Goal has been to destabilise last vestiges of russian power and establish Anglo-American hegemonyin Eurasia.So strategic alliance forged during Cold War with Islamic militants has continued.The botched coup in Uzbekistn on May14-15 2005 where Islamic rebels tried to oust Islam Karimov govt must be viewed from this angle.

Ahmed's research shows despite official denial US intelligence received extensive warnings of an impending Al Qaeda strike including the likely nature of terror assault.But strangely chose not to act.Author refers to Project Bojinka.The plan called for hijacking planes and crashing them on to selected targets:CIA HQin Langly,Virginia;WTC in NY city; Pentagon and White House in Washington DC.This plan lay hidden in a laptop seized from an Al Qaeda operative by Phillipine police and subsequently decoded.The information was passed on to President and senior govt officials.Warnings of a similiar nature emanated from several sources.Concurrently Al-Qaeda men ,prelude to aattacks,were undergoing flightraining in leading flying schools of the country.Local FBI wanted to stop this but was prevented by some high officials based in Washington DC.

Further procrastination by FAA, NORAD facilitated terror attacks.Delay in scrambling air defence fighters prevented the timely interception of errant planes.Few of the fighters were misdirected and govt later resorted to specious reasoning to justify this manoeuvre.Action constitutes clear violation Standard Operational Procedures governing the interception of planes straying from established flight path.

So then ,finally,what is author driving at? Does he mean to say Al Qaeda was given a free hand to attack US? If so it sounds very cynical.How can President harm his own people which he is supposed to protect.My fear many will find this book unpalatable and few may dismiss it as absurd.But author's message to the American people is loud and clear: beware of your govt; it has taken American people for a ride by unleashing a massive disinformation campaign.While respecting author's views ,I feel more research needs to be done to establish wheather there was really a conspiracy surrounding events leading to 9/11.

In the footsteps of "The Protocol of the Elders of Zion" and " don't bother with the man behind the curtain " I won't waste anymore time with this conspiracy rubbish as the nutcases have come out and decided that right is wrong and wrong is right..up is down and water is dry. I just love the post 9/11 neo-historians out there who buy this hookem because they are too lazy to read but a small piece of the Pan-Arab -Petro-induced fusion into the media and anti-American so called professors who take up space in our colleges and universities because the are self appointed "experts"

Having read several books on the phenomenon of terrorism and historical accounts of 9/11, I must conclude that Mr. Ahmed's book, "The War On Truth" is head and shoulders above the fray. Copiously researched and constructed from an abundance of corroborated sources amply qualifying his statements, Mr. Ahmed pops the membrane of the vainglorious hype balloons - packaged for distribution by WH propaganda offices and politically motivated committees and floated by the corporate media - revealing a national security complex that has been deeply politicized and compromised to serve elite transnational corporate interests at the peril and expense of the American people and indigenous populations around the world, particularly in Eurasia. After consuming this reality sandwich - which illustrates the tactical use of terrorism to achieve corporate welfare and "strategic imperatives" - you will never see the so-called "war on terror" in the same way. This is a good thing, because what America and its Western allies need more than anything else is a good dose of truth.

If we were a country of laws - rather than political expediency - there would have been a full-scale criminal investigation of 9/11 conducted by an Independent Special Prosecutor and Grand Jury with unlimited judicial subpoena power. Instead, we are sliding into totalitarianism on a raft of lies. Mr. Ahmed's book makes a strong case for returning to the lawful, Constitutional process and holding those who have treasonously hijacked the nation's intelligence and military capabilities accountable.

In my opinion, for those wanting to look deeper into the events surrounding 9/11 and it's implications, "The War On Truth" should be number one on the book list. Mr. Ahmed's work solidly proves, with sober scholarship, the staggering amount of involvement and complicity on the side of the US Government in the attacks of 9/11 specifically, and in international terrorism generally. Mr. Ahmed attempts to show how international terrorism is an effective tool and vital pretext used by US elites for the expansion of US hegemony in the world, and for the control of remaining energy supplies in Eurasia. In my opinion, Mr.Ahmed's work succeeds on all levels. 9/11 was but the much needed "Pearl-Harbor" which could provide the "shocking" and much-needed pretext for America to begin to implement it's plans, which have been devised over the past decade or so, to invade Afghanistan and establish a base and "jumping off point" for further operations in Central Asia. Essentially, the US government allowed for the murder of 3,000 of its citizens to provide the "much needed justification" to pursue this objective, i.e. the war on terror, which is anything but.

In response to those who criticize Mr. Ahmed for "not being extreme and hardcore enough", I think this is absolutely absurd and idiotic. Mr. Ahmed has contributed a work which is solid in its academic approach, and undeniable in its presentation of the material. This is a sober, and much needed work on the topic of 9/11, which can hold up to any scrutiny directed at it by those wishing to deny the allegations of US government involvement in 9/11, in my opinion. Let people who are perhaps not very informed on these matters build for themselves a solid basis of information of what happened and why, and from there they can delve further into the more "technical" aspects of what occured.I agree with Mr. Ahmed, who, in a lecture and question and answer session on C-Span, commented that he didn't want to scare off those interested in 9/11 by appearing as nothing more than another conspiracy theorist. I agree with this approach. The facts are there and undeniable. Why not try and make them available to as many people as possible? Once people have a firm understanding of these facts, they will naturally want to delve deeper into the topic and perhaps investigate the more "hardcore" aspects of 9/11.

The War On Truth: 9/11, Disinformation And The Anatomy Of Terrorism by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed (Executive Direction of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, Brighton, England) is the sequel to "The War on Freedom" and provides the most comprehensive critique of the American government's official version of what happened when al-Qaeda operatives attacked the United States. The War On Truth draws upon government documents, whistle blower testimony, and the findings of official inquiries to analysis both the initial attack, its precedents (such as the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center in New York), and the subsequent "War on Terror" launched by the Bush administration and its allies. Written from a decidedly Islamic perspective, The War On Truth is informed and informative reading for anyone studying international terrorism, national security, and the clandestine machinery of Western power. Other highly recommended works by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed include "The War on Freedom: How & Why America was Attacked: September 11, 2001" and "Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq.

Several reviewers on this site, who I must admit have read more books on the subject than I have, have made comments that Ahmed doesn't go far enough. I just completed the book after having read Synthetic Terror which I think was recommended by one of these same critics.
The impact and the conclusions of both books, in my opinion are basically the same:The military industrial complex ordered the attack, let the attack happen, benefitted from it, etc, etc. I mean how far does the man have to go? How could it be possible that Ahmed is some type of CIA agent when he says unequivocally that Bin Laden and his organization were and continue to be tools of the American government? He shows how the Project for a New American Century wanted a new Pearl Harbor and then he shows how the US government had maintainded its ties to, and control of Bin Laden through third party surrogates.Its a sphreical expose on how the US government works. Its all right there and its inescapable; either the US controls Bin Laden or Bin Laden controls the US. Ahmed beats you over the head with this conclusion over and over with damning evidence throughout. If just half of his sources are correct, the books justifies its existence. I find that any criticisms that he's been "bought out" to be hair splitting in the extreme.I mean who cares about WTC 7 after he's already said the government did it? His theoretical construct in favor of symbiosis makes all the sense in the world to me. Its straight out of Star Trek 5. The books kind of a grind, but its worth it.Take the pill.

Physicists are now speaking out on how World Trade Center buildings coming down the way they did cannot be explained without explosives, particularly for WTC building 7, which wasn't even hit by a plane [...]but you won't find any serious discussion of this in Sander's book. He's actually rather hostile to those working to expose physical evidence regarding 9/11. The reason for this hostility is pretty clear, as a demolition of the Twin Towers and building 7 points not to people in the US government "letting" 9/11 happen, as Mr. Hicks postulates, but rather to them making it happen.

Hicks doesn't even give serious consideration to the possibility that that the "terrorists," might simply be patsies set up to appear responsible. Sander's hostility towards physical evidence showing that 9/11 was an inside job is particularly evident in his discussion of the Pentagon attack. Now there's honest disagreement within the 9/11 Truth Movement over whether or not Flight 77 really hit the Pentagon, and some researchers, such as Jim Hoffman of [...] believe it did, but these researchers are respectful and intellectually honest in their discussion of this, neither of which can be said for "The Big Wedding." For example, on page 105 he shows a picture of the Pentagon that's designed to give the impression that the hole was obviously big enough to accommodate a large aircraft. But he shows a picture from after the roof collapsed and not one of the many available from after the impact but before the roof collapse where no large hole is readily evident. And neither his text nor any captions tell the readers this. So we're left to conclude that he's either being intentionally misleading or that he failed to do even rudimentary research on a subject he was writing about.

Ahmed's "The War on Freedom" was a groundbreaking work. It was one of the first books questioning the official story of 9/11 to be published in the English language, and provided a vital source of inspiration for the work of 9/11 champion David Ray Griffin. As such, I had high expectations for this book, but was sorely disappointed. The scale of the omissions is staggering - at some points matching or even surpassing those of the official 9/11 commission. In all the books 460 pages, he doesn't even once discuss the overwhelming evidence of controlled demolitions of both the Twin Towers and WTC building 7, which wasn't even hit by a plane. For those looking for a complete and fearless expose on 9/11, I recommend two tried and true works as the best introductions to these issues: "The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11" and "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions," both by David Ray Griffin. I know there's always hype when something new comes out, but it's only deserved if the new book adds something that the old book didn't adequately address, not if it omits something vital. I'll be happy to address new books on 9/11 if they represent a step forward from Griffin's great works. Unfortunately though, this book is a major step backwards.

Building on his magisterial works 'The War on Freedom' and 'Behind the War on Terror', the author did more extensive research on the 9/11 massacre, its framework and its consequences.

In the 9/11 attacks, he found overwhelming evidence of involvment of US and foreign intelligence in nearly every single element. The US government granted knowingly free passage to a confirmed terrorist to undergo flight training. Possible evidence of US involvment was quickly destroyed after the attacks. The CIA was complicit through omission or failure to act, or was prevented from acting.
Extremely baffling is the picture of a Vice-President who follows on a TV screen a plane heading into the Pentagon and who refuses to give an order to scramble it (175 people died).

Paramount is the question: who benefited from the attacks? The military and intelligence budgets soared. Actually, one half of the US budget goes to the military-industrial complex, which works on a risk-free, cost-plus basis (fat margins, not to speak of the cost overruns). The attacks served also as a pretext to intervene in or invade foreign countries.

For N.M. Ahmed, US geostrategic imperatives for ruling the world constitute the framework. Ruling the world means, strategically, permanent military bases (e.g. 13 military tent cities in 9 countries around Afghanistan) and, economically, control of oil.
In the last decade, some US interventions served to destabilize the last vestiges of Russian power in Eurasia, other ones to grab or control permanently oil and oil-flows.
A hidden part of these interventions consists in the manipulation of terrorist networks like Al-Qaeda. (R. Labeviere: Even after Al-Qaeda turned against the US, intelligence dollars continue to be funneled to it.) More, without Al-Qaeda the war on terror would lack a permanent target, eroding the legitimacy of US policies.
The map of terrorist sanctuaries and targets in the Middle East and Central Asia is a map of the world's principal energy sources.

The consequence of the attacks are felt all over the world, where civil liberties, basic freedoms and human rights have been curtailed in the name of terrorism.

The conclusion of the author is bitter: under the US leadership the world is becoming a global police state administered by the powerful for their own profit.
He ask that, at least, a public inquiry into the global war on terror should be held.

This hard hitting book is a bombshell. A must read.

While there is certainly something to be said for this book painting a "worst case" conspiracy theory scenario, I have to say that it is consistent with both my years of experience as a clandestine case officer, anad my extensive reading on national security misadventures. I do agree with one reviewer's observation that we should not over-estimate the competence of the U.S. Government, but I also believe that we cannot under-estimate the incompetence of the bureaucracy nor the lack of ethics of the political ideologues.

Academically, objectively, this book is about as carefully laid out and sourced as one could want. The quotes that it offers from official State Department officers complaining they were ordered to give visas to clearly unqualified terrorists being trained and supported by CIA stand out, as do the retrospective quotes on everything the FBI failed to do against the first World Trade Center bombing. This book is, in brief, everything the 9/11 Commission was not. The two taken together, along with the Aspin-Brown Commission, give us a good sense for reality.

Having been a part of the CIA when it was committing high crimes and misdemeanors in Central America, and having been a youth in Viet-Nam when CIA was in charge of the Phoenix assassination program and learning how to fly drugs and launder money for its warlords, and based on my extensive reading, I am persuaded of the three core propositions in this book:

1) That CIA and FBI managed clandestine relations with those who blew up the World Trade Center for years, and generally concealed and obstructed Justice investigations after 9/11 because of their antecedent mis-behavior;

2) That both the Clinton and Bush White Houses actively supported the Taliban and the secret Enron negotiations with the Taliban to build energy pipelines, not realizing at the time (as we know today) that the extraction and transportation of the energy as envisioned then is actually not supportable; and

3) That the Bush White House was already planning to invade Afghanistan, with all of the operational plans drawn up as early as July 2001, and 9/11 was treated as a Pearl Harbor pretext.

Having read most of what has been written by Brzezinski, Kissinger, and others I find the author's speculation that the U.S., the U.K., and France, among others, have been actively using terrorists, nurturing terrorists, as part of a geopolitical and economic strategy, and that in their naivete, they nurtured a force they cannot control today, to be completely credible.

I recommend this book be read together with "Fog Facts" by Larry Beinhart, and "The Long Emergency" by James Kuntsler. The first examines information that can be known, as in this book, but that is ignored if not over-shadowed by "spin"; while the second examines the pathological implications of cheap oil and all that cheap oil has made possible, including the creation of huge cities that are unsustainable into the future; the transport of vast quantities of water over long distances to places that will be dry in the near term; and the shipping of very cheap goods over very long distances from China by Wal-Mart.

Bottom line: cheap oil is the fool's gold of this century, only it is toxic and radioactive. The White House, Enron, and a cast of rather poorly-read bureaucrats came together to create a toxic mold called sub-state terrorism. The bureaucrats were following orders or had good intentions--the politicans and their corporate cronies were and are out and out thieves who are looting the Republic for their own selfish gains, firm in the belief that enough people will be fooled until they are out of office and laughing all the way to the Cayman Islands. They are probably right.

This book is perhaps best described as an alternative history of the Global War on Terrorism and the tragedy of 9/11. It attempts to develop evidence to support the author's conclusion that the operations of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden are really extensions of U.S. geo-political strategy to dominate the Central Asian Republics and to control the petroleum reserves of the Near East. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed has accumulated a good deal data in support of his arguments, but has done so very selectively ignoring large amounts of equally relevant data that does not support his conclusions. Further, Ahmed has a rather idiosyncratic interpretation of the data he has selected which not all readers would agree with. He also attributes a higher level of focus and competence to the American Government than I think the evidence will support. In short this book presents a well written, well documented, but highly implausible conspiracy theory. An objective review of all the data relevant to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden will demonstrate, I think, that the global Islamic terrorist movement is not the witting or unwitting tool of U.S. Global Strategy.

Yet I gave the book four stars. The U.S. Government has absolutely failed to regain the credibility it lost as the result of the Vietnam War and its aftermath so it is important that books like this continue to be written to call into question the motives and intentions of its officials. An open mind is the best path to clear thinking.

This book is a tojan horse, which appears to tell the truth about 9-11, but is actually slick Globalist-sponsored disinfo.

Nafeez Ahmed showed so much promise. His initial book, "War on Freedom" accused the U.S. government of complicity in the 9-11 attacks. Since the publication of his original work, a plethora of new evidence has emerged such as the admitted demolition of WTC7 and Cheney running the hijacking drills on 9-11. Yet Nafeez ignores all these new smoking guns...

Instead he peddles weak "prior knowledge" disinfo. According to Ahmed, the military may have (gasp!) known the attacks were coming. But he won't even take a stand on such a weak thesis, favoring a "perhaps, maybe, it's kinda possible" approach. He then mixes in a bunch of Peak Oil propaganda, straight from the Tavistock labs. Peak Oil is a manufactured crisis to justify the Globalist's goals of population control and de-industrialization.

Nafeez Ahmed has either been bought out or "compromised" through blackmail. I watched him on C-Span recently at a 9-11 conference and he didn't use a single minute of his hour of speaking time to discuss the hardcore evidence. He is a fraud, another Left Gatekeeper like Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, and the rest of their Rockefeller-funded crew.

The "war on terror" has left me very confused. Whenever I see oppositional figures, they are very difficult to understand. They seem to be raging lunatics, screaming incoherently about "America, the great Satan." Really, they seem uncivilized, barbaric, and unquestionably insane. That is the appearance---to me. This is not at all useful. We cannot suppose we understand another person---even our enemy---if we cannot reasonably state his point of view. Certainly I could not.

This book is so wonderful because it strips away the insane, bearded exterior of the opposition and states the underlying point of view in a thorough, coherent, and factual way. So, this is a very great service.

To me, the book seems to adopt the sort of extreme position that might serve as a debating position and not as an attempt to find the truth. The author asserts, for example, that the Soviet Union was basically a peaceful giant. According to this view, the Soviets did not actually pose a menace during the cold war. They were not dangerous. They were not expansionist or land grabbing. The United States, in this view, built the cold war into an unnecessary crisis (basically by propaganda) and used the opportunity to further its own separate agenda. This sort of extreme view ignores too much. The author should visit Prague in spring or the shipyards of Poland if he really wants to add balance. The truth is not so extreme, either for the Soviet experience or for the current confrontation with the most radicalized Islam.

Still, there is a lesson for us here, too. While the author has chosen the opposite extreme point of view, his point of view is not without fact or merit. The German people have always been a great people. As it happens, they managed their government poorly in the 1930's, and it caused a nasty dust up in the 1940's. We seem, in the United States, to be similarly mismanaging our own government---even though we, too, mean well. Our government attacked Iraq under the slogan "WMD" when there proved to be no WMD. We can discuss whether that is incompetence or criminal action. The author would suggest it is neither. The author would suggest it is part of a larger game. That may be in doubt, but there is no doubt that some correction is needed.