Customer Reviews

Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil

5 star:		(155)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Regarding the review from the_mirror.

I have never considered either Timothy McVeigh or Terry Nichols to be American heroes. Pawns, patsies and not very bright, yes; Heroes, never. Further, like many who are moderately familiar with the OKC bombing, I have serious doubts as to the government's version of events there and I also seriously doubt that a truck bomb caused all that damage based upon hard science.

Neither do I advocate or even remotely endorse any form of violence against the government, especially a cowardly attack against innocent women and children. I never have.

These convenient attempts to discredit me and Rubicon with associations we have never been a part of are transparent efforts that have been easily recognized by Amazon reviewers thus far.

I am, however, humbled and personally gratified by the reviews I have seen. They prove that people are getting it!

Michael C. Ruppert
Author
"Crossing the Rubicon"

This book is important.

[it's NOT by Catherine Austin Fitts as first-credited above (she writes the introduction). The author is Michael Ruppert]

Crossing the Rubicon is comprehensive in scope and Ruppert uses well-honed investigative procedures to reveal key missing pieces in the investigation of 9/11/01. He also uses his vast knowledge of U.S. military procedure, protocol and policy to expose the inner workings of CIA, FBI, NSA, JCS, NORAD and FAA in detail that far exceeds that of the 9/11 Commission.

Ruppert composes circumstantial evidence, eyewitness accounts, and actual testimony of participating agents and agencies from mainstream news sources, from Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies, from the 9/11 Commission's activities and Report and from on-the-record interviews of instrumental figures who reveal facts not published anywhere else.

He takes focus on the "wargames" issue and exposes the FACT of numerous exercises conducted on 9/11 that included the use of false radar blips that clearly confused FAA, NORAD and JCS personnel, that resulted in the wildly distant assignment of aircraft, and that was the result of a very specific re-organizing and restructuring of air defense long before 9/11 and he thus comes to the conclusion of complicity and awareness by high-ranking members of the Bush Administration fairly.

Ruppert conjectures from his research as to how the events could have been orchestrated but does so by composing a specific narrative of FACTS, reproducing work he conducted on his website [including revealing immense increases in "put" options that evidence foreknowledge by monied interests] and conducting original research and interviews.

Ruppert identifies players who were involved, would have had to be involved and may have been involved and clearly points out amazing ommissions by the 9/11 Commission and 9/11 Truth researchers including the FACT that the deputy director of the National Military Command Center [a position required to coordinate NORAD,FAA and JCS in both wargames and real-world events] actually asked on September 10, 2001, to be absent from duty on September 11 between 8:30 and 10:30 a.m. [the exact time of the attacks], that this did occur despite the fact the the hijackings and attacks were already taking place and that no one has ever received an explanation why. [further Ruppert reveals that the Officer who replaced this important defense coordinating position was a long-time Bush Administration friend recently qualified to hold the position as the result of Bush appointment who filed the shortest testimonial in all of the 9/11 Commission's requested written depositions]

Ruppert explores some fringe pursuits like the revelations of Vreeland, but far-more of the book is about the back-story, about the relevance of Peak Oil, about intelligence factors and about the workings of the U.S. military under conditions such as those on 9/11.

Having interviewed Ruppert twice for Pacifica Radio, I can say he is clear and direct on 9/11. He is not erratic or imprudent.

I, like many, have long suffered his overwriting, his penchant for vernacular and sometimes excessive language and pop metaphor, but his research and investigation is far too good to allow such failings to be relevant.

This book is too important to miss; understanding its contents is integral to understanding the U.S.A. under Bush and the New World Order. It also confirms lingering doubts and hundreds of unanswered questions as a result of the Bush Government narrative of what happened on September 11, 2001.

I'd like to extend my thanks to everyone who has reviewed Crossing The Rubicon, and to everyone who has read the book. And a special thanks to those who have done both.

Let me reply to a recent review by a Mr. Watson. "Already some of his witnesses are unravelling as in the case of Mike Vreeland." The sentence starts with the plural, but it really refers only to Vreeland -- whom the book describes as utterly unreliable EXCEPT in the special case of his 911 warning. Why? Because the warning was a physical document whose authenticity and pre-9/11 provenance have been attested by Vreeland's lawyers, court records submitted under oath, interviews with the attorneys, former Canadian federal prosecutors, and news media. At no point does Ruppert's use of Vreeland depend on the latter's personal credibility.

Then Watson refers to the exchange between a "Victor Thorn" of "Wing TV" and Mr. Ruppert. For a complete and accurate account of the matter, including Wing TV's questions and Mike Ruppert's answers, see Ruppert's website, page:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/10questions.shtml

Watson continues: "The improbability of such an event [9/11] being pulled off under the noses of every uninvolved government/military official is not discussed." It is discussed at length -- see pp. 2-4; 12-18; 103; 203-224; 291-306, et al.

"Ruppert asks us to believe that Bush/Cheney could pull 9/11 off with such precision and them fumble so publically with WMDs in trying to connect 9/11 with Saddam - which he states was their main reason for 9/11 - an excuse to grab the oil." Ruppert does not say any such thing. Nobody who had read this book could possibly come away with the view that the Iraq war was the "main reason" for 9/11.

"Plenty of dots, but not many connections. Indeed, given enough dots, one can connect any kind of picture one wants." Yes, and this applies to the official story (the conspiracy of 19 highjackers and the man in the Afghan cave), and to the 26-volume "Warren Report," and to every other text. The job of an investigator, like that of a lawyer or an historian, is to configure an accurrate interpretation whose logic is more compelling than the others. This is achieved through a combination of sound evidence gathering and valid argumentation. Mr. Ruppert has produced both in abundance.

Mike Ruppert is unquestionably a great American hero. His book, Crossing the Rubicon, is the single most important book written in the last fifty years at least. The Patriot Act, Homeland Security and the lies about WMDs in Iraq have created a growing sense of unease in the collective unconscious. As a result, a growing number of intellectuals and every day citizens are begining to see the Truth and more and more people are begining to wake up every day. Crossing the Rubicon is at the forefront of this new awareness. Most reviewers here have already done a great job summarizing the content of Mike's book. The many five star reviews are well deserved.

I want to write a note about the campaign to discredit Mike Ruppert and his book, a campaign which has apparently begun full blast. Another reviewer has already correctly noted how the few one-star reviews on this site follow the standard rules of organized disinformation campaigns. Through the use of innuendo, character assasination, and classic misdirection, several reviewers make it appear that the book rests its case on a handful of issues, such as the Vreeland case. In fact, all 696 pages are saturated with enough well documented and diverse evidence to prove the 911 criminal conspiracy many times over while adhering to the highest possible journalistic standards. Mike makes a case that could actually hold up in a court of law, whereas the establishment case for 911 could not even hold up in a high school debate. Quite a pathetic comment on the state of our society but I digress.

The most comically pathetic aspect of the disinformation campaign is a new "conspiracy website TV show" which proceeds to slam Ruppert in a laughable thirty-minute video. They make such shocking claims that Ruppert is "rude...impolite...a liar, blah, blah, blah" without offering anything substantive to back up their "claims". Anyone with even a degree of clear perception can clearly see that these people are either operatives with very poor acting skills or low grade actors hired by operatives. The lack of sincerity in their eyes, their nervous body language and laughable "faux-left-wing" wardrobe and demeanor betray an obvious Wag the Dog operation. A little research into their website and published books indicate that the entire operation has been slapped together in the last few months, no doubt to coincide with the publication of Crossing the Rubicon. This type of thing might fool the sheeple who think CNN is their friend. But those of us who have already seen the underbelly of the Propaganda Beast can only shake our heads in sad amusement. What a joke. Ruppert is wise to simply briefly address their libel on his own site but otherwise ignore them.

As Crossing the Rubicon gains ground, one can only imagine what new lows the disinformation campaign will hit. What's next? Websites that scream: Mike Ruppert Married Satan and Gave Birth to a Pink Alien Octopuss who Molested your Mother!! Don't TRUST HIM!!

Hang in there Mr. Ruppert. Heroes are rarely recognized in their own time. You may or may not get the adulation you deserve in this lifetime but your work will help many people survive the coming storm.

Generations will owe you.

I buy and read a lot of books. I tend to buy books that expose the corruption of our political and economic system. My mother always asks me why I don't write my own book that ties everything together. I tell her that it would be a job that would take year.

I do not have to do this. Mr. Ruppert has. I just placed an order for 34 copies to be mailed to my friends and relatives (and a few web masters that I want to educate). If you think this is a long read, then just read the introduction, chapter 1, and the last chapter. I do believe you will find the time to read the rest.

One of my personal interests is the precious metals market. I have made a ton of money in this area. If you follow his recommendations and read from the web sites he mentions, you may find yourself making a lot of money.

There are only a trillion barrels of oil that can ever be recovered left. We are using up 80 million a day. That is before India and China ramp up their consumer (automobile) culture.

And yes, this book lays it on the line and says that Bush and Cheney did 9/11. They made it happen. Read this book.

This is a courageous book by a dedicated journalist and a courageous American. He dares to tell what all evidence suggests is the real story of how and why 9/11 happened, but in the broad context that it takes to truly understand it. He lays out in meticulous detail and with complete documentation how the U.S.'s hunger to control world oil at this time (when the reserves of oil will be essentially gone in a very few years) has led it to take extraordinarily aggressive and violent measures to ensure that it will do just that. How does 9/11 fit in? Some say that it was the pretext for our getting direct control of Iraqui oil fields, where the U.S. is building a number of very permanent-looking military bases. And so it was. But 9/11 wasn't just a pretext that came along; it was MADE to happen. Does Ruppert suggest government complicity? You bet, and he has the facts to prove it. Are you ready to entertain the possibility that we have criminals and traitors at the head of our government and several of its major agencies? No? Well then, open the pages of this book, and you'll have it all laid out for you in such stark detail that it will change the way you view our government and our world forever.

As this book has been extensively reviewed, I'll try to stress original points. First, as a negative, the book is long and somewhat disorganized. The removal of secondary and excessively speculative material could have shortened and strengthened Ruppert's case. As a researcher, he is sometimes problematic. Much of his work is diligent and superbly argued; some of his findings, however, are shaky and speculative. For example, I was unimpressed by his attempt to weave rogue "agent" Mike Vreeland into his scenario. The payoff is hardly worth the effort. To his credit, however, Ruppert also forcefully presents a massive array of compelling and well-documented information to build his case against the "official" conspiracy theory.

Building on the research of people such as Paul Thompson and Nafeez Ahmed, Ruppert completely demolishes the credibility of the official conspiracy "narrative". Ruppert has also done extensive original research, which includes contacts with key individuals in the military, law enforcement, and aviation. One of the grave difficulties for anyone trying to understand 9/11 is the aggressive suppression of essential information: relevant documents are classified; key materials such as airliner black boxes, radio transcripts, tapes, video, etc. locked away or destroyed; widespread gag orders prevent individuals in the FAA, law enforcement, the military, etc. to speak openly without fear of prosecution and/or job loss. And our magnificent leaders Cheney and Bush refuse to answer questions in public and under oath about 9/11 (perfectly understandable if Ruppert is right), despite their public responsibilities.

Still, anyone who scrutinizes the "official" conspiracy theory with an open mind cannot help but conclude that it is simply not credible. The fact that hijacked airliners flew around for nearly 1 hour and 40 minutes without a single interception (routine interceptions of wayward aircraft typically take 10 minutes or so) has never been explained. The manipulation of timelines (as Ruppert shows 3 different "official" versions have been released) by NORAD and the FAA is particularly damning. These times are recorded and logged on the most sophisticated computer/communication systems in existence; they do not depend on recollection or interpretation. The notion that Donald Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Richard Myers wandered about completely oblivious to most of the crisis (according to their own claims) is simply impossible without a fundamental breakdown of all military and security protocol on the morning of 9/11. Numerous pre-9/11 warnings of impending attacks using airplanes poured into the Bush Administration, yet they were ignored and even subsequently denied. The list of improbabilities and "coincidences" can run to hundreds of pages--as Ruppert demonstrates.

Critics of Ruppert typically attack the weakest facets of his case and avoid confronting the massive bulk of evidence buttressing his arguments. Emboldened that they've weakened one argument, they then pretend that the entire case is suspect. However, this simply will not do. His case is not a chain of logical inferences each dependent on prior links. It is a powerful cumulative argument and honest critics should confront the strongest material, not avoid it.

For example, in the Amazon reviews, R. Watson demands of Ruppert to explain why Bush/Cheney didn't just plant WMD in Iraq instead of orchestrating 9/11. First, 9/11 was a catalytic and galvanizing event: America was attacked by "terrorists" and thousands of people were killed. The event was used to justify an endless "war on terror" that will not end in our lifetimes (according to Cheney), massive military spending, two invasions (with more in the works?), the gutting of the Bill of Rights, the Patriot Act, torture, American gulags and suspension of habeas corpus, etc. How would planting of WMD in Iraq have an equivalent effect? The objection is absurd. With 9/11, Bush/Cheney got their invasion of Iraq, and so much more.

Raquel Baranow's review attacks Ruppert for bad research by citing puzzling numbers about public debt on page 499. These numbers, according to her, justify rejecting his entire case. If she bothered to read page 497, however, she would notice that Ruppert acknowledges the surprising numbers and then lucidly accounts for them.

Crossing the Rubicon, in spite of flaws, is absolutely essential for anyone seriously trying to understand the origin and aftermath of 9/11. We have been told by Bush and his supporters that 9/11 is an event that justifies endless war and suppression of our Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions, etc. If you care anything at all about the American Republic, then you owe it to yourself and everyone you know to read this book with an open mind and consider its arguments. If you're still convinced that the Bush Administration has told the truth and is acting in our "interests", then I'll be greatly impressed.

This book is worth 100 times what it costs. This is THE definitive work on 9/11 and the corruption of the military-industrial-banking complex that runs this country. It also confirms what I have suspected my entire life- that the U.S. government and it's intelligence agencies have become the largest, most ruthless and despicable organized crime syndicate in the history of mankind.

They WERE responsible for the 9/11 attacks. I don't care if you don't want to believe it. Dedicate a few months of your life and put in well over a thousand hours of research into what happened that day and then tell me I'm wrong. Take a step back and look at 9/11 again. Look at what happened in the time leading up to 9/11, what happened that day, and everything that has transpired since then. Starting to get suspicious? Starting to think for yourself instead of letting your TV do your thinking for you?

The majority of the American public has been completely brainwashed and propagandized by the mainstrean media, which is completely controlled and influenced by the government and big business. Actually, those two are pretty much the same entity, and have been for almost a hundred years.

Wake up America. The future of you and your families is now in the hands of of a handful of maniacal, ultra-wealthy "elites". These are the people that tell the President what to do, not vice-versa, and make no mistake, they have this entire nation on a march to Armageddon.

The government has been compromised. The media has been compromised. The citizens and military have been betrayed. 99.9 percent of Americans, including our brave soldiers are now just pawns in the game.

It's not too late to stop this, but we MUST become aware of what's going on in the world and how it really operates.

I already own this book, but I'm about to buy two more. I suggest you buy two also, that way you can get free shipping and have one for yourself and one to give to someone else.

If it's not too late to save this country, this book will be what saves it. It is that important. Get it.

I can't really say it any better than my subject says it.

I am only 3 chapters in, though I have skimmed the entire thing, and I am a regular reader of Mike Ruppert's From the Wilderness publication. His insights and exhaustive referencing, and footnotes are only matched by his courage. I know this sounds like dumb rhetoric from one of his supporters, but I would call him a true humanitarian patriot, because he appears to be interested in the truth, and it doesn't matter whether that truth adversely affects the Republicans, the Democrats, or completely nonpartisan interests, like the CIA.

You may find the thesis far-fetched, and I can certainly understand that, but I encourage you to read it with an open mind, and then check a random sampling of his sources for yourself. His opus finally links the seemingly disparate topics of corporate corruption, banking, drugs, oil and terrorism into a whole that show compelling motive and rehearsal for an unprecedented American power grab.

I suggest you stop listening to what people say (Bush, Kerry, Cheney, etc.), and instead simply look at the facts of what they have *done*. Ruppert has been doing this for years, and he makes a compelling -- dare I say irrefutable -- case.

Edited 30 June to add links to ten books and observe that rankism is bad, but providing credentials to outweigh the ridicule that is used against books such as this (also rankism from Cheney et al) is not bad.

As the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction about global issues and national security (#66 over-all), as a former spy, founder of the Marine Corps Intelligence Command, and CEO and proponent for Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), I think I have a good foundation for evaluating this book. It is so compelling and so troubling that I was obliged to create an eight-page worksheet to ensure I understood the details.

The author alleges that Dick Cheney personally oversaw the 9-11 scenario, with largely fabricated hijackers used by the U.S. military as OPFOR exercise personnel and aided by Israel and Saudi Arabia, that most of the so-called hijackers were not actually on the airplanes; that the two airplanes hitting the WTC were flown by remote control in at least the final minutes from WTC 7 where the Secret Service (Cheney's personal vehicle for running the government) and CIA had their offices; that all three buildings, including WTC 7 which was not hit at all were brought down by controlled explosions, and the Pentagon was hit by a missile aided by a homing device, not Flight 77, which was put down elsewhere. (He notes that Congress was not evacuated, suggesting that either Cheney was incompetent or he knew the missile would hit the homing device in the Pentagon.)

Bottom line: he has NOT provided enough evidence to convict Cheney, but he HAS provided enough evidence to suggest that the 9-11 Commission was very derelict in its duties; that very select elements of the U.S. Government are engaging in a cover-up after facilitating the murder of U.S. citizens; and that a public investigation and trial of Dick Cheney are required.

Here are just a few highlights from this very complex and earnest book:

1) The end of cheap oil is a global crisis. Central Asian reserves were thought to be a temporary respite from global chaos. When this was known not to be the case, in 2000, Wall Street cashed out and allowed the public to bear the brunt of the stock market crash, and the Clinton Administration began to develop Al Qaeda, with Saudi Arabia and Israel, as a covert operation. I am more inclined to believe we allowed Al Qaeda to develop, rather than nurtured them deliberately.

2) Wall Street depends heavily on drug money for liquidity. When the Taliban killed the opium crop in Afghanistan, this was a form of economic warfare against Wall Street's immorality, and they were more than glad to support a U.S. invasion of Afghanistan which had the direct result of jumping Afghanistan's contribution to global heroin from 0 to 80%, with all that money going to Wall Street. Stunningly, the author reports that the head of the Stock Exchange traveled to Colombia to invite the FARC to invest its drug money in US stocks--the "ultimate cold call." Specific companies associated with laundering drug money through off-book deals include HP, Ford, Sony, GM, Whirlpool, GE, and Philip Morris.

3) The author provides a very compelling case for the possibility that there are two CIA's--a very small elite that work for Wall Street, and were until recently led by Buzzy Krongard as Executive Director of CIA (his "former" firm did most of the puts on United Airlines and profited greatly from 9-11), and a "lip-service" CIA that bumbles around. The links that he establishes between oil companies and logistics support companies to the U.S. military, and their importation of drugs that seem to explode anytime CIA goes into Laos or Afghanistan or Colombia or anywhere else in a big way, are remarkable. He has very specific details, including references to drugs going to oil rigs off New Orleans and then directly in through the most corrupt police force in the country.

4) Congress passed the Patriot Act without reading it.

5) Massive deception has occurred in relation to terrorism. The U.S. refused multiple offers from both the Taliban and Somalia to deliver Bin Laden--everything about post 9-11 has been about damage control, not investigation; the Kean Commission was riddled with conflicts of interest that the author discusses in detail.

6) Specific corporations are named that appear to merit investigation, including Acxiom, Brown & Root, Carlyle, Goldman Sachs, Halliburton, DynCorp, Lockheed, and Raytheon. One corporation, from Israel, broke its WTC lease at great expense the week prior to 9-11.

7) Numerous individuals are named who were not properly interviewed by the 9-11 Commission. Both those on watch and off watch (e.g. BGen Winfield who asked to be relieved from 0830 to 1100 from his post as director of the national military command center) have not been grilled. Mayo Shattuck of Alex Brown resigned on 12 September. Dave Frasca, the FBI leader that blocked all investigations, Admiral Abbott, key person for Cheney, Karl Inderfurth, General Ahmad from Pakistan ($100K to Al Qaeda in US the week before the attack), a whole host of people were simply not investigated.

8) This is massive evidence of sustained fraud by Wall Street, mortgage companies, and others, inclusive of schemes to draw money out of the U.S. Government (i.e. from the taxpayer) through Housing and Urban Development mortgage fraud in drug-affected neighborhoods, and from the Department of Defense. The author alleges that by his detailed estimate, Wall Street has looted three trillion dollars from the U.S. Treasury. As a side note, he points out that Enron's records were moved to Switzerland in what could be a deliberate cover-up of their role in all of this.

9) Murder hangs heavy in this book. Lest anyone believe this is a fairy tale, the author ends the book with a copy of Operation Northwind, the JCS plan from 13 March 1962, to murder Americans in a series of events designed to provide a pretext for invading Cuba.

I cannot conclude that Cheney is guilty. I am completely persuaded that Cheney should be indicted, investigated, and tried by a jury of his peers, We the People.

Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict With a New Introduction by the Author
Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror
Game Without End: State Terror and the Politics of Justice
Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption