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83 of 90 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tars CIA & FBI, US, UK, France, with Supporting Terrorists, 9-11 a Pretext, October 25, 2005
This review is from: The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism (Paperback)
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 offe
rs 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: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin by Larry Beinhart, and The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century 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.
EDIT of 11 Dec 07: See also, with reviews:
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration
Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage)
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
and of course the 9-11 DVDs, which I find compelling.
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34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The case that we're sliding into totalitiarianism on a raft of lies, December 25, 2005
This review is from: The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism (Paperback)
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.
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40 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
best, most important, book on 9/11, July 4, 2005
This review is from: The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism (Paperback)
"ontopicks" has got it all wrong - Ahmed has done us a great service - and outdone himself yet again - with this brilliant sequel to The War on Freedom, his 3rd book. This book isn't about resolving theories of MIHOP or LIHOP, which is of course a fairly banal issue of internal interest to the 9/11 truth movement rather than the uninformed patriotic public unaware of 9/11 as "the big lie". It's an unprecedented, courageous confrontation with the entire political history of international terrorism in the post-Cold War period.
Ahmed doesn't repeat unnecessarily the writings of other authors who've written on 9/11. This is because The War on Truth is a work of original research, and isn't actually derivative of those other authors in any sense. Also, Ahmed's expertise - the realm of political science and international relations - leads him to focus on exactly that. Physical theories are simply not the remit of his actual thesis, which is a political thesis about, to paraphrase him, the symbiotic ties between Western power and international terrorism. To be frank, Ahmed's work consistently outclasses every other 9/11 author for its sheer detail, meticulousness and wealth of documentation.
The War on Truth is based on more than 1,000 sources - largely mainstream news accounts, official documents, critical analysis of the official inquiries, and occasionally the critical use of the findings of some other researchers. To say that it's based on "left-gatekeepers" is simply disingenuous. This book is based on such an abundance of rich and credible sources, it's almost impossible to keep track except for Ahmed's superb, lucid narrative.
The overall result is a powerful and sophisticated argument that contributes new knowledge not only to the 9/11 truth movement, but to political science in general. Ahmed completely eclipses Tarpley and others with a detailed examination of the systematic linkages between western military intelligence services, regional intelligence services, and al qaeda networks, across several different continents. For instance, he does detailed case studies of al qaeda activities in algeria, chechnya and the philippines - and finds that the respective al qaeda terrorist networks are fundamentally subverted and coopted by local state intelligence services backed by the west! he extends the analysis to Madrid: and finds that the al qaeda perpetrators of the Madrid bombings were double agents working as informants for the Spanish government! So he goes much further than Tarpley in his analysis, and far deeper.
And he ties it all together with a fascinating overview of how al qaeda DOES exist, was created by the western powers, but ultimately manipulated and coopted by them not only during the Cold War but well after the end of the Soviet Union until today in the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Asia-Pacific, Central Asia, the Middle East (yes, including Pakistan and Saudi Arabia), etc. Most disturbingly he demonstrates beyond doubt that these policies inevitably and directly produced anti-western terrorist attacks, with the full awareness of western government elements maintaining these 'ties with the devil',as Ahmed ironically describes them. And his focus is not only Bush, but Clinton. Not only the USA, but Europe and Britain.
As for his discussion of the hijackers - I've never read such a detailed and well documented account of the odd liaisons between the US military intelligence services and the alleged 9/11 hijackers. Ahmed doesn't bother going round in circles wondering whether or not the hijackers existed, or were actually on the plane, or not - he simply presents report after report showing that these guys were monitored round-the-clock by the CIA and FBI both before and after their entry into our country, were trained by the US military, and were steeped in completely anti islamic practices like alcohol, cocaine, and lap dancing. And he clearly suggests, at one point, that these guys were probably double agents, although with characteristic and welcome caution, he doesn't labour the point and again leaves it to us to make up our own minds.
This is ultimately the real value of Ahmed's work. By sticking to simply laying out fact after fact in such intricate detail, he offers us a powerful antidote to the prevailing myth that can be given to anybody, whatever the political standpoint. Whether you're into MIHOP, LIHOP, or know nothing at all about the problems with the 9/11 official story, you need to read this book, urgently. It gives us the big, "geopolitical" picture of international terrorism and al qaeda as products of a worldwide system of western power, "symbiotically conjoined" to the "arteries" of that power, to paraphrase Ahmed again. So buy it, read it, get your friends and family to read it, and send copies to your representatives. This is probably the most important book you'll ever read.
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