America's "War on Terrorism" (Paperback)

by Michel Chossudovsky (Author) "The world is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history..." (more)
Key Phrases: United States, Central Asia, Colin Powell (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
Chossudovsky has written an alarming book that ought to serve as a wakeup call for every citizen in the World. -- Anthony Lafratta, Chapter-Indigo,

Chossudovsky has written an alarming book that ought to serve as a wakeup call for every citizen in the World. --Anthony Lafratta, Chapter-Indigo,

Chossudovsky's book is a "connect the dots" work that should be required reading for media-misled and history-starved Americans --Kellia Ramares, Online Journal

Chossudovsky's book is one of those "connect the dots" works that should be required reading for media misled Americans. -- Kellia Ramares, Online Journal.

Material this provocative and well researched must not be ignored. -- Scott Loughrey, Baltimore Chronicle

Material this provocative and well researched must not be ignored. --Scott Loughrey, Baltimore Sun

The book is short, concise, filled with footnotes and bibliographies. -- Bob Banner, HopeDance

Product Description
In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky's 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by "Islamic terrorists". The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy. According to Chossudovsky, the "war on terrorism" is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The "war on terrorism" is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the "New World Order", dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex. September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington's agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State. Chossudovsky peels back layers of rhetoric to reveal a complex web of deceit aimed at luring the American people and the rest of the world into accepting a military solution which threatens the future of humanity.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 387 pages
• Publisher: Global Research; 2 edition (September 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0973714719
• ISBN-13: 978-0973714715
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #596,040 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The 'War on Terror' is a myth, July 7, 2006

By	Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Michel Chossudovsky's ultimate goal is to serve World peace by revealing extensive war crimes behind the `War on Terror'. His picture of the world and the US is far from rosy. For him, the `War on Terror' is in fact a `War of Conquest'.
This is a very convincing but disturbing book pointing to the criminalization of upper echelons of the US State with the complicity of the media, which upholds the Bush administration's war agenda, camouflages war crimes, floods the world with blatantly distorted facts and disseminates fear amongst the population.
For the author, the US is on the brink of becoming an authoritarian state. Key decisions are taken behind closed doors at the intelligence headquarters and the Pentagon, with the US Congress as a façade and a president as a public relations figurehead. The military/intelligence establishment acts as a parallel government.
The `War on Terror' is used for the repeal of civil liberties and Constitutional government. New legitimacy emerged that undermines the judicial system (`Rule of Law') and that lays the foundation of a totalitarian state: emergency procedures can be used to usher Martial Law, leading to the suspension of Constitutional government.
In the US national budget, state resources are redirected towards financing the military-industrial complex and domestic security, while social programs have been slashed.

Internationally, the `War on Terror' is a pretext to conquer new economic frontiers, establish corporate controls (e.g. Iraq's oil), to encircle Russia (permanent military bases in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan and in former USSR republics) or to prevent pipeline ventures with China and Iran.
The US continues to support Islamic fundamentalism (India, China, Chechnya) in order to weaken `enemies', or to disarm social movements against the US (e.g. with the Taliban they try to create a new Saudi Arabia in Afghanistan where the leader of the Northern Alliance backed by Russia, was killed).
Al Qaeda was heavily supported by the CIA and NATO in order to destabilize the Yugoslav federation.

With `private wealth is in fewer and fewer hands', the author sees an upcoming world dominated by big corporations (finance, energy, pharma) and the military/intelligence establishment with the media as their mouthpiece.

The author concludes with very disturbing facts about the London bombings which provided a new legitimacy to those who had ordered the illegal invasion of Iraq and which weakened significantly the antiwar and civil rights movements.

Michel Chossudovsky has written a dark and frightening book.
It is a must read for all those interested in the future of mankind.

I also recommend the works of W.G. Tarpley, W. Engdahl and N.M. Ahmed.

34 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful Views on US/CIA as the Threat, Totalitarianism Emergent, May 6, 2006

By	Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

This is a helpful book, useful and pointed, that attempts to document, with some but not complete success, the charge that Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were concocted threats spawned by the CIA and used by the Bush Administration to permit unilateral military operations aimed at capturing Central Asian and Iraqi energy resources.

The author has clearly done a great deal of research and independent thinking, but the book would have benefited considerably from an intergration of the timelines and other thoughts to be found in such excellent works as "Crossing the Rubicon," "Resource Wars" etcetera.

The author's central thesis is that we are moving toward a totalitarians new world order in which war, police repression, and predatory economic policies are integrated and interface with one another to create a privileged wealth class, and impoverish the rest of the world including the American and Canadian middle classes. It merits comment that the author's primary scholarly accomplishments are in the economic arena, and this book is appreciated more if one also reads his "The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order."

The author points out something I did NOT know from my other 700 books as reviewed here at Amazon: that Bin Laden was in a Pakistani military hospital on 10-11 September. This coincides with other authors who have suggested that 9-11 was originally intended to be a nuclear event, and was, by agreement between the Bush Administration and the Pakistani government, "downgraded" to a controlled hijacking.

The author is courageous and on point when he suggests that we now have war criminals in office who have the temerity to decide who is a terrorist and who is a criminal. As the author's work implies, Dick Cheney is right up there with Henry Kissinger in terms of actions against international law that could warrant his being extradicted to stand trial before the Tribunal.

The author also makes useful points--in harmony with other authors now emergent--to the effect that the drug crop in Afghanistan is essential to Wall Street and the international banks, and is fully the equal of oil trade in its importance to international speculators and economic power brokers.

There are some disconcerting errors within the book, for example, the author states that the budget of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is $30 billion a year, when anyone who follows the U.S. Intelligence Community knows that this was at the time the TOTAL budget for all the secret agencies, with CIA receiving roughly one tenth of the total. Today the budget is close to $60 billion, CIA is a disaster area, and America is no safer.

Overall the author focuses primarily on the CIA as the source of all evil, and completely neglects both the FBI, whose incompetence or collaboration were essential to both World Trade Center attacks (the car bomb, and then the airplane attacks), and he also tends to neglect, for lack of understanding, any mention of the Saudi Arabian private intelligence network that displaced CIA long ago, as well as the private global murder network (see my review of Joseph Trento, "Prelude to Terror: The Rogue CIA."

There is a very clear pattern emerging in the broader literature that suggests that the Bush Administration is impeachable, and that the Clinton Administration before it is also impeachable, for a deliberate neglect of reasoned energy policy, and a deliberate nurturing of economic policies that enrich a few at the expense of both the home country middle class, and the billions around the world who are being driven to terrorism and insurgency by predatory immoral practices pursued by the U.S. Government in partnership with selected multinational corporations, many of which are fronts for importing impoverished illegal workers to the US, and destructively under-priced Chinese goods to the US marketplace--goods that destroy the local ecnomies.

I will end with a complement to the author: he offers and interesting combination of Chomsky and Sachs, a balance between deep critical commentary and deep scholarship. He speaks truth to power. His work merits our attention.

See also, with reviews:
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids
Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An essential guide , April 19, 2006

By	Salwa-Sophie Mramer (Montréal) - See all my reviews

Michel Chossudovsky's book is, to this day, an important source of information to be able to understand what is really going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. This work is obviously the result of a tremendous amount of research. Chossudovsky succeeds at tracking government sources and analysing mainstream media discourse to debunk one of the biggest lies of the twentieth century.