I have the audio version and found it interesting and upsetting, but not soley for the obvious reasons. Are the common folk simply pawns to these people who plan wars and assasinations where hundreds of innocent people are killed, with no regard to life.

Bush called Saddam and Osama evildoers, murderers. Isn't he and his Saudi brethren cut from the same cloth? I know this in naive, but what is needed is a total transformation of human motivation, ideology and governmental structure.

Further, while I have no way of knowing if all the facts of this book are true, it is certain that nefarious deals are the way of the world. How much money is enough?

I further find it despicable that a hundred of so despots who happen to live above a buried field of oil should have become so influential. Perhaps, we invaded the wrong country.

I enjoyed this book but it had a very liberal slant. Too much opinion and not a lot of hard fact. There was a lot of linking people to deeds without fact: guilt by association.

Obviously an anti-Bush book. Doesn't really explain how all Presidents were involved in saudi dealings. i know that its called house of bush, but still. It would have been better if it wasn't so one-sided.

This author has a palpable, deep, and abiding hatred for the Bush family. Maybe someone named Bush ran over his poodle or something.

To suggest, as he does in this book, that President Bush personally saw to it that the Saudi royal family was allowed to fly out of the country after 9/11 just borders on despicable. The author is just dripping with such seething, wretched hatred that it clouds everything he writes.

Just check this lunatic out on Wikipedia.

This book is another quart of vomit this guy spews on the reading public.

The book is everything they say it is, and even now it still stands out, even towers over the pile of Bush-revelations of gaffs, deceit, blunders and fraud, that fill the bookshelves today. My judgement isn't objective. I'm not an investigative reporter, or a former high-level federal functionary with linenes to air. I'm a citizen who's kept track of Wubya's astonishing career for the past few years. To be brief, I read the first third of the book and had to put it down. I was so nauseated by what I read. I wasn't astonished or surprised by most of it, only nauseated by the detail of background information and the amounts of money involved. So, I put it down for three weeks or so. Then, I picked it up and finished it in one lunge. And now, two days later, I remain not only as nauseated as I was months ago, but horrified by the tsunami of corruption barreling out of Crawford.

It is bad enough that we find ourselves economically tied cheek and jowl to China, that scarcely repentant Communist jauggernaught--particularly when we can't even cope with poor, bumbling Cuba--but that this snare of Bin Laden's that we've blindly and quickly fallen into in Iraq, and in which we bleed lives and treasure daily, to the tune of billions upon billions--has been and is likely to continue to be covertly funded by the Saudis, our odi-et-amo confrers in this morbid oliodebacle. They buy our businesses, our buildings, real estate, bonds, race horses, and hire our armies and navies, our planes and bombs; they debauch freely at our resorts and yet think of us as less than dogs or swine, laughing all the while at our notions of personal freedom, human dignity and democratic government. We have been sold to not one, but two murderous theocracies, Israel and Saudi Arabia, and lie helpless between them, tied by financial obligations to them both. Where are the walls before which the villains who hawked our country to fanatics can meet their just rewards? If they lie in their beds, nights, securely and comfortably, without fear of retribution, then all our ancestors who fought for the nation's honor must twist in their windidng sheets, in shame.

It is terrible that this book had to be written, but I am grateful to the man who had the nerve to write it.

Craig Unger has connected a lot of the dots! I think this should be required reading. It is depressing to read about all the crap that is going with our government and know that there is nothing that can be done about it. Left feeling outraged and helpless. At times it felt like a thriller and I am sorry that it is not fiction!

It was during the 1930's that American geologists informed President Roosevelt about the immense oil resources of Saudi Arabia. Aware that the future of nations would greatly depend on oil, Roosevelt quickly established friendly diplomatic relations with the Saudi Royal family.

Then in 1974 a Texas aircraft broker named James Bath sold an F-27 turboprop to Salem bin Laden, Osama's older brother. (As a footnote, Salem bin Laden died in a small general aviation aircraft that he was piloting in Texas). From that moment onwards developed the "Houston-Jeddah Connection" which allowed wealthy Saudis to gain access to powerful Texas politicians and the Bush family that still lasts up till today.

The Saudis' ultimate goal was access to the inner sanctum of the US presidency. Businessmen such as BCCI's bin Mahfouz rescued American politicians' companies that were in financial distress. The author puts a price tag on the Saudis' contributions to the Bush family at a staggering $1.4 billion! Furthermore, $860 billion were invested by the Saudis in the US.

Then there is the Bush-Carlyle relationship. The Carlyle Group put George W. Bush on the board of one of its subsidiaries, Caterair, in 1990. From that moment on, the Bush family's relationship with the Carlyle Group began to become substantive. Key figures at the Carlyle Group included such powerful figures as James Baker, Frank Carlucci, and Richard Darman.

With former Secretary of Defense Carlucci guiding the acquisition of defense companies, Carlyle began making a lot of money from the Saudis, both through investments from the royal family, the bin Ladens and other members of the Saudi elite, and through lucrative defense investments.

The author shows how US leaders repeatedly chose to ignore the warning signs of Saudi extremism and corruption, in return for access to material wealth the Saudis promised them.

The Saudis also assisted the US in arming the Contras and Iraq.

According to the author, George W. Bush's narrow victory in the contested 2000 presidential election was due to the American-Arabs in Florida voting for Bush. They tipped the balance of the vote!

Many will find this Saudi-US relationship repugnant, especially when fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals. Despite this latter fact, the White House helped about 140 Saudi royals and bin Ladens to fly out of the U.S. only days after 9/11 when all commercial and private flights were grounded. At first, the FBI denied this fact. Later, it was substantiated. The author contends that, contrary to FBI's insistences, the Saudis weren't screened as required by the FBI. All this was happening behind closed doors when no one else was allowed to fly. Former President Clinton was stuck in Australia, and former Vice President Al Gore was stuck in Austria.

Craig Unger's book shows how world Presidents and politicians are more than just elected officials -- they are members of circles of family and friends out to serve their own purposes and goals.

This book might deceive the reader in believing that the powerful Saudi Royals can and do influence the US Government. This is absolutely not true, but rather the other way around. The US holds the Saudi Royals in a strait-jacket, and they know very well that should the US decide to remove them from power, they can easily do so. Seeking to maintain power at all cost, the Saudi Royals are nothing more than a US puppet regime making a strong effort to please the Americans at all cost. It's all about personal favors - you scratch my back and I scratch yours. To illustrate, Crown prince Abdullah was shocked when he saw a picture of an Israeli soldier with his foot on the face of a young Palestinian girl. He called his nephew, prince Bandar, then the Saudi Ambassador to the US, and asked him to deliver a personal message to Bush condemning the Israelis. The message used strong language and did not carry a friendly tone. Bush junior was shocked. He immediately replied with a handwritten letter, stating that he supported an independent Palestinian State and asked that the Saudi-US friendly relationship continue. Crown Prince Abdullah boosted about this letter to Arab leaders, displaying the power the Saudi government had over the US. This boosting was short lived, for days later the events of 9/11 unfolded, and the Saudis found themselves on the defensive. They could not influence the US; it was the other way around. The US now held the Saudis by the throat!

You might ask how was it possible for all planes to be grounded after the 9/11 attacks except for those planes that were carrying Saudis? Bush has a lot to gain personally to extend favors to his rich friends!

This book is also an expose of the US role in the creation of the Mujahedeen or "Holy warriors", Osama bin Laden, and of Saddam Hussein. The Mujahedeen were created by the US to fight for the American cause under the pretext of fighting in the cause of Islam against the atheist foreign invaders. One of these Muslim "Holy warriors" was Osama bin Laden, who was transformed from a spoiled rich kid educated in the US to the Mujahedeen leader. The US was not bothered by the Mujahedeen as long as they served the US goal of weakening the Soviets.

Saddam Hussein was created by the US to fight the Iranians who were viewed as a threat to the US. At first, under the Shah of Iran, the US supported Iran and armed it to the teeth. When the Shah of Iran was overthrown by the Ayatollah Khomeini and the US Embassy at Tehran was taken hostage, the US changed positions. Carter encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Iran to ultimately free the US hostages. However, America soon realized that Iraq was gaining strength, so they once more changed positions and financed Iran. The US was giving Iran and Iraq conventional, chemical, and biological weapons to use on each other! This ping pong policy went on during Carter's presidency.

Reagan and Bush senior supported Saddam Hussein, even after they found out he was using chemical weapons against his own Kurdish citizens. Bush senior, during his Vice Presidency, went to the Middle East to give Iraq weapons of mass destruction and the media showed the meeting as "moving the peace process forward".

Of course the US was not bothered by Saddam Hussein as long as he served the US goal of weakening Iran. Saddam may have been a brutal dictator, but he was the US-made dictator. This is how the age of terrorism was born, sculpted by no other than the United States of America.

Saddam's relationship with Bush senior quickly deteriorated after Saddam invaded Kuwait and threatened to invade Saudi Arabia, thus endangering the global market for petroleum. The US asked King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to offer it bases in order to strike Saddam. Osama bin Laden, now viewed as a hero by all Arab nations for defeating the Soviets, asked King Fahd to deny the US request. King Fahd refused, and allowed the US to establish bases on Saudi soil. This angered Osama, and he declared a jihad against the United States because U.S. soldiers were being based in Saudi Arabia, the holy land of the two holy mosques in Medina al-Monawara and Mecca. Osama viewed the American bases as a blasphemy against Islam, with the "infidels" now standing on the "sacred soil". This rupture caused the King to send Osama into exile and confiscated his passport. Osama was therefore no longer a Saudi citizen. However, the other members of the wealthy bin Laden family remained close to the Saudi royals.

With its bases now in Saudi Arabia within easy striking distance to the Iraqi forces, the US, with the help of an international army, expelled the Iraqi army from Kuwait and imposed strict sanctions on Iraq as punishment. As a footnote, the author claims that Saddam Hussein did not amass a large army into Kuwait. The author alleges that two Soviet commercial satellites showed no Iraqi troop buildup in Kuwait except America's own troops.

Time went by, and Clinton was elected president. He continued the sanctions against Iraq and on several occasions bombed Iraq. But no crippling attempts were made against Iraq or removing Saddam from power. But when Bush junior came into power, he was determined to finish off what his father had started in Iraq. His goal also involved a highly personal grudge, as Saddam had previously attempted to have Bush senior assassinated while he visited his troops in Kuwait.

Prior to Bush junior's election, a policy favoring the overthrow of Saddam had already been written up by a neo-conservative group called "Project for a New American Century". Now Bush was waiting for any excuse to invade Iraq. This excuse came after 9/11. Bush junior grabbed this opportunity to invade Iraq, even though no Iraqis were on any of the airplanes in the terrorist attacks of 9/11; no al-Qaeda camps were present on Iraqi soil; and no weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq.

On March 28, 2002, Abu Zubaydah, a top al-Qaeda operative, was arrested in Pakistan. He was interrogated, and named three Saudi princes, including Prince Ahmed bin Salman, as al-Qaeda's link to the Saudi royal family. Zubaydah said Ahmed knew of 9/11 in advance. Prince Ahmed bin Salman died suspiciously on July 22, 2002, and the other Saudi princes named by Zubaydah mysteriously died as well by the end of the year.

Here are a few interesting comments by some reviewers on amazon.com:

"It goes without saying that the current Saudi monarchial regime is better than the alternative -- a radical Islamist theocracy."

"So what the heck are we doing dealing with these people? Three words: oil, oil, oil."

"How can you expect Bush to protect us from terrorism when he hangs out with the main financial backers of terrorism?"

"Have you ever wondered how the Saudi elite can be the playboys of the Western world, have homes in the United States, and still be the rulers of a strict Islamic nation that openly and vehemently despises anything Western and especially American?"

"Why was the Bush Administration opposed to an official investigation of 9/11? Remember, the 9/11 hijackers were mostly Saudis, and a few Egyptians -- no Iraqis or Afghans. Why did the Bush Administration censor 26 pages in the Congressional investigation of 9/11 about the U.S.-Saudi relationship? What secrets are the House of Bush and the House of Saud hiding from their respective peoples and the rest of the world?"

This book will leave you scratching and shaking your head in disbelief at the inner workings of governments. It will certainly change the way you think about politicians!

I've been researching the "House of Bush" personally for over 20 years - peaked by the Iran-Contra Affair.

This copiously noted and researched book will put you on the top of the info wave....just in time for Bush43rd's turn at the helm of a Titanic ofa presidency.

With this information in hand, I am sure the Congress will be able to make their case for investigation of any and all trade agreements and security arrangements that Bush43 has been arranging with the House of Saud and their friends.

Great book for a long summer week out camping. Just remember to bring along Post-Its....you will be bookmarking every other paragraph for 'future reference'.

I must praise Unger for breaking down every detail for a clear understanding. I especially appreciated him jumping back to the roots of a secretive relationship between the "Bush Dynasty" and the wealthy elites of the desert monarchy of Saudi Arabia, to reveal the unknown wealth transferred between the two friends and how that money landed into the hands of the most notorious terrorist known to the modern world. Knowing the history of any relationship, event and or situation does enlighten ones eyes to the truths that lay hidden to citizens of the world, and Unger does just that, by revealing the secrets of the money transferring through the BCCI. I did enjoy the first half of the book more than the last half, only because Unger seemed to get wordy with descriptions, and declined to share with the readers critical information about the first gulf war (this is just one example: how Bush senior didn't want to invade Iraq itself, after deeming Saddam as dangerous not because he didn't want to start a war but because Iran would end up controlling the potentially weakened, Shiite majority country, and that is exactly what is happening today) Overall personally Unger was not as tell all as I thought he would be, and was a bit too conservative for my radical point of view.

This is a must read for all. After reading this, if you still want to vote republican, fine. At least you are informed. For those who can really stand by the PNAC, go for it. The rest of us would like a democracy.

This is a good book with lots of great information about the incestuous relationship between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family. The relationship is repugnant, especially in view of the fact that fifteen of the nineteen 9/11/2001 hijackers were Saudi nationals; in light of the apparent White House managed flights that helped some 140 bin Laden and Saudi royals to escape the U.S. only days after the murderous attacks on American soil.


Quite honestly, I wonder why an otherwise intelligent man like Craig Unger would receive and prominently display an endorsement from an extremist-bigot like Michael Moore on the front cover of his book. Why not include on the cover other luminary Jew-haters and Israel-haters such as Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Cindy Sheehan, John Dingell and Cynthia McKinney? Unger indicates no personal Jew-hatred or anti-Semitic tendencies in his book. Why then did he resort to a bigot like Michael Moore for an endorsement?

The first half of the book was enthralling in its description of how the Bush family and the House of Saud became entangled with each other, but the post 9/11 chapters degenerate into innuendoes found in conspiracy theory and idle speculation.

This is an informative look at the Bush family's dealings with the Saudis, but the last half of the book needed to be as factual and straightforward as the first half. Unger seemed to imply complicity of the Bush administration in 9/11, and until that is proven beyond reproach, I'm not buying it.

The only major criticism that I can think of regarding Craig Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud is that it suffers from solid, researchable sources to back up his, what would be, eye opening and jaw dropping information.

When the occasional source is quoted, it usually turns out to be a passage from another author's book and almost never from personal research or interviews conducted by Unger (he does mention several times throughout the text that he was repeatedly turned down for interviews from several of his book's principal subjects). Usually "direct quotes" come from unnamed sources or other unrecognizable lower level government or corporate employees.

Even though all of Unger's work needs to be viewed with a skeptical eye due to it's lack of support, it doesn't mean that he hasn't grasped several important threads of truth. If anything, Craig Unger's book shows how a President or any other world leader is more than just the person in office-they are a member of a circle of family and friends that are more than the sum of its parts. Craig Unger shows how those "parts" can directly and indirectly influence the path of nations.

This book was presented to me as a birthday gift from my sister in January 2005. I only just read it. It is a fantastic expose of the close relations between the Saudi Royal Family and the Republican Party, specifically the Bush dynasty.

I am a Conservative myself (the British version of the Republican Party) and I wanted George W. Bush to win during the 2000 and 2005 elections. I agree with many of the Republican/Conservative policies but the foreign policy remains much to be desired. So how did I react after reading this book?

Well, I didn't realise how powerful the Saudi Govt. was in influencing the US Govt. I had always thought that Saudi Arabia was influenced by the USA and strait-jacketed, with no room for manoeuvre. But this book shows it is the other way round. How is it possible for all planes to be grounded after the 9/11 attacks except for those planes that were carrying Saudis? This could only happen if the US-Saudi relations are set in stone.

The book is also an expose of failed foreign policies that led to the creation of the Mujahadeen, who were drawn in to fight the American Jihad under the pretext of fighting in the cause of Islam against Atheists. The multinational force of the Mujahadeen didn't seem to bother the US and Europe as they served a purpose. The ex-National Security Adviser, Zigniew Brzezinski didn't see a problem with the terrorist threat from the Mujahadeen as he had a higher goal of removing the Soviet Empire. Unfortunately some of these Mujahadeen (a group of which was named as the MAK, the precursor to Al-Qaeda) came back to bite their masters in the bolloks. This is a lesson for the US, never to support terrorists, whether it is the Mujahadeen or Saddam Hussein or any future groups of a similar nature.

If the facts of the book are correct, it would mean that Saudi Arabia, despite its lack of military capability, is probably the most influential country in the world as it can influence US policy. The word, `can' is the operative word here. It can influence, but doesn't as much as I would like it to. Given that the Middle East Peace Process is in crisis and there are human rights violations in other parts of the world, the Saudi muscle must be flexed harder in order to pressure the US to find lasting peace in the Middle East. The era of the petrodollar is over, now the era of diplomacy must prevail. The Saudi-Bush relation must be used now more than ever to change the landscape of the Middle East and achieve results for Jews, Muslims and Christian in that region.

But foreign policy must be just. Unlike the Israeli lobby, which also has a large influence on the US Govt. (regardless of whether it is a Republican or Democrat Govt.), the Muslim/Saudi lobby should not lobby for a particular group or sectional interest, it has to go beyond the `national interest' philosophy and bat for the interests of everyone, Muslim and non-Muslim alike as Islamic justice is for all. As a Muslim who is also politically Conservative, this is the view I take.

The House of Bush must be rectified so that Bush's pledge of Compassionate Conservatism can break through the US border and migrate to other countries and replace the bombs that have wreaked havoc for countless of innocent civilians. The Saudi Govt., which is the guardian of the Two Holy Mosques, must also be rectified so that it can truly purge the Muslim world of terrorists and ensure that the correct message of Islam is spread and to flex its muscle harder on the US Govt. (Republican or Otherwise) to achieve a solution in the Middle East.

Here is a saying: `The Pen is Mightier than the Sword'.
Here is another saying: `Oil is mightier than the bomb'.

The Saudi Govt. does not need billions of dollars of AWACS or other military hardware. It has a secret weapon which took 65 million years to make and didn't cost a penny.

Hasan Ali Imam
(Ex-Parliamentary Candidate, Conservative Party)
London
UK