Customer Reviews

The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

The breath of the deception practiced on the US and the West by our governments as presented by this well documented and referenced boook is overwhelming. Mr. Ahmed has done an outstanding job, and should be highly praised by readers and seekers of truth.

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.

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.

Finally an astute and scholary work on what really transpired on that horrific day in our history. This book refutes the fantasy 911 report composed by the Bush adminsitration! A must read for any American citizen concerned about the future of this country and the direction the Bush administration is taking us.