Rating: 
Summary: Balderdash!
Review: This book lists an astounding number of 'facts' and 'data' to support its message that the 9-11 disaster was not simply an attack by radical Islamic fanatics, but included collusion by elements of the US govt at the highest level.
Balderdash!
If Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld had any knowledge of this plot, why would he be sitting in his Pentagon Office when it was attacked by a jetliner?
Pres. Bush is portrayed as ignoring the news of the first jetliner crash while attending a pre-school. An issue is also made of poor response the US Air Force. Neither of these claims prove anything, other than slow human response to exceptional and out-of-the-ordinary events.
The author ignores the possibility of human error, bureaucratic bungling and infighting and attaches a sinister meaning to his collection of facts. This will be irresistible to the left-wing, progressive, hate-America crowd.
It's ironic that the author, obviously of Middle-Eastern extraction could write such an incendiary screed after the attack upon America. Only in the West do we have such freedoms. Maybe he should apply his skills in uncovering the real and present danger of fundamentalist Islamic fascism. But if he tried that in the Middle East he would probably simply disappear, never to be heard from again.
This book is fiction promoting itself as fact. It is a young man's emotional diatribe against his bete-noir, America. To put it into "Mr. T" 's words: "I pity the fool,,who believes this doggerel!"
P.S. I did not vote for Pres. Bush, nor did I support his rush to war.
Rating: 
Summary: This Book Blows My Mind
Review: Incredible wealth of historic fact carefully written in a sequential/linear style and very thoroughly footnoted! Highly readable also! What more can you ask for? It reads like a great spy novel but unfortunately itis oh so true...It leaves me aghast (and I thought I knew which way the wind was blowing!-Hah, no, no). Read this book, Read this book, Read this book!
Rating:
Summary: The Duck Wins
Review: My title for this review is based on a joke told by President Reagan, many years ago:Q: How do you know an [ethnic group one] is at a boxing match? A: He enters a duck in the boxing match. Q: How do you know an [ethnic group two] is at the boxing match? A: He bets on the duck. Q: How do you know the Mafia's at the boxing match? A: The duck wins. On 9/11/2001, the Duck won big in that four airplanes were hijacked almost simultaneously, and three of them made it unchallenged to crash into their targets in the most highly secure airspace in the world. Before the attacks, our supposed intelligence and investigative agencies went beyond playing Calvin and Hobbes (being off in Outer Space while someone's trying to tell you something critically important) to suppress the investigation of numerous warnings of an upcoming major terrorist attack. After 9/11, the Bush Administration lied to us repeatedly, and stalled and stonewalled any investigation of how the hijackings and crashes could possibly have occured. This book, "The War on Freedom," discusses this and more in great detail. A large fraction of what he says is already familiar to me. Much was not. The official NORAD timeline for NORAD's response to the attacks can be described by this parabole: Just across the street from a fire station, a large building bursts aflame. The fire station has the responsibility for fighting fires in the neighborhood, so the fire department summons a fire engine from another station ten miles away. The fire engine drives an average of twenty miles per hour, stopping at all traffic signals and traffic signs, stopping for doughnuts on the way, etc. The fire engine arrives half an hour later, when the building is totally destroyed. Meanwhile the fire station just across the street has done nothing. Impossible? Consider the choice of bases (Otis Air National Guard Base and Langley Air Force Base -- respectively 150 miles and 130 miles from New York and Washington, DC) and the speed the fighter jets from the bases flew (500 mph and 220 mph). The response was guarranteed from the start to fail. The response was designed to fail, and it failed as designed. Much of the information was published in the USA, and is publicly available. The problem is more than just connecting the dots, which "The War on Freedom" does does admirably. The problem is getting people (who are in a position to act) to pay attention, think, and act -- ie. to stop being like Calvin and Hobbes. As far as I know, nobody in the US House of Representatives has filed an impeachment resolution against Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the Bush Administration for the attacks. Nobody's heads have rolled in NORAD for violating standard operation procedure and standing by during the attacks. We don't need a major comprehensive investigation to see that 9/11 was an inside job.
Rating:
Summary: The best book on 9/11
Review: The is the most comprehensive analysis of the events leading up to and on September 11th.
Rating:
Summary: Open our eyes that we may see: WAG THE DOG, WAG THE DOG
Review: "'The 'recession' and 'war' buzzwords are being used to mould U.S. public opinion into accepting a massive redirection of the nation's resources towards the military industrial complex... the shift from civilian into military production pours wealth into the hands of defense contractors at the expense of civilian needs... behind the Bush Administration is the power of the 'big five' defense contractors (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, et. al.), increasingly in partnership with the oil energy giants... The Big Five defense contractors have been shifting staff and resources from 'civilian' into 'military' production lines. Lockheed Martin (LMT)--America's largest defense contractor--for instance, has implemented major cuts in its satellite division due to 'flat demand' in the commercial satellite market. A company spokesman had reassured Wall Street that Lockheed 'was moving in the right direction' by shifting financial resources out of its troubled commercial (that is, civilian) undertakings into the lucrative production of advanced weapon systems including the F-22 Raptor high tech fighter jet to be assembled at Lockheed Martin Marietta's plant in Georgia'. "...the new direction of the US economy, Chossudovsky continues, 'will generate hundreds of billions of dollars of surplus profits, which will line the pockets of a handful of large corporations..." "'In examining any crime, a central question must be 'who benefits?' The prinicipal beneficiaries of the destruction of the World Trade Center are in the United States... it is reasonable to ask whether those who have profited to such an extent from this tragedy contributed to bringing it about.'" quotes from Canadian economist
Michel Chossudovsky and
investigative journalist
Patrick Martin
THE WAR ON FREEDOM
Chapter Seven, The New War:
Power and Profit at Home and Abroad
and Conclusions Ahmed, through almost *seven hundred* footnotes, political and historical analysis, quotes of everyone from European and Afghani political analysts to New York stockbrokers to American congressman and FBI agents--and some of the most erudite, plain language, paradigm-shifting scholarship I have ever read--irrevocably changes one's view of the world with this mind shattering book that would read like an Agatha Christie novel...if only it weren't about our world. In the end, whether or not you choose to follow Ahmed to the end of his theories, read this book and you will be left with a totally new understanding of the secret architecture and raison d'etre of modern history and war. Gandhi and Martin Luther King were right about non-violence--for reasons that I would have never considered until now. Ahmed even predicts the construction of Saddam Hussein and an Iraqi war as the number one way of taking America's attention away from the many secrets of Saudi Arabia, the American oil companies and Osama bin Laden--and what it would mean to the present administration if they were to unravel and become public knowledge--months before talk of invasion due to chemical weapons were even in the air.
Read this book and you will never naively believe in the concept of "just war" again.
Rating:
Summary: The War on Philistinism
Review: Making Mssr. Meyssan's brief writings on this subject look like kids' stuff, Mr. Ahmed's text lays out a very strong case that the US State knew very much about the Eleventh, had very much to gain by terror atrocities committed against its citizens, and acted on these conflicts of interest in order to safeguard geostrategic goals at the expense of its own civilians. Many times the text, however, asserts that it is a presentation of preliminary evidence, and hence requires further investigation--and surely, it should be enough to provoke a serious inquiry in a joint session of Congress, among other types of investigation. For those interested in unofficial investigations, look at Paul Thompson's *Complete 9/11 Timeline* online as well as the website *people's investigation of 9/11*. This text, though, connects many dots in a very convincing way. In regards to Mr. Tausch's comments below: -on my edition of Mr. Ahmed's text, Mr. Tausch's original positive blurb is not on the cover, as Mr. Taucsh's retraction claims, but rather on page 3 -in my edition of Mr. Ahmed's text, the last third of the book is not dominated by anti-Israeli conspiracy theory, as Mr. Tausch's retraction claims; rather, page 329 to page 384 (i.e., closer to 1/8 rather than 1/3 of my edition) develops a thesis that some of the evidence points irrefutably toward Israeli involvement in the Eleventh--however, this thesis is in the "backword" to Mr. Ahmed's text and is argued by John Leonard. Mr. Ahmed's argument makes no mention of such items, focusing as it does on US duplicity, foreknowledge, and conflicts of interest. Tausch should not set his readers chasing after misattributed red herrings. -Mr. Tausch then argues that Mr. Ahmed has "sided with easy and false conspiracy theories," but offers no evidence for their falsity; I wonder if Mr. Tausch accepts "easy conspiracy theories" if the conspirators are the vast Evil al Qaida network, the International Communist Conspiracy, or some other hobgoblin that the State has historically trotted out in order to frighten the childlike citizens who cower breathless, begging for protection. Tausch should also explain what is so unreasonable about suggesting that corporate, political, and military elites, who have access to money, secrecy, and power, might on occassion use such items to further their own goals; such a suggestion isn't unreasonable if made about factory workers, who typically have not money nor secrecy, nor power--why the sudden aversion to the notion that people with motive and opportunity just might act on such? I would recommend that Mr. Tausch actually weigh and consider the aggregate of evidence offered by Mr. Ahmed herein, and dismiss, if found personally distasteful and politically incorrect, the arguments developed very much separately by Mr. Leonard. Overall, a solid text that thoroughly destroys the State's official narrative in regard to the Eleventh.
Rating:
Summary: A Really Good Book--Clears Up A Lot of Questions
Review: This book pointed to hegemony, oil profits, and
a president's falling ratings in the polls as
possible major causes for 9-11 failures, not
the Massad. It's full of facts. If knowing the
facts comforts you, it is for you. The Israeli
connection is explored in a related website,
the "What Really Happened" website. This book
does not deal with the Massad as a cause.
Rating: 
Summary: Correction to my previous review
Review: In a review of this book I mistakenly identified John Leanord, the author of a "postscript" to the book, as the John Leanord who writes regularly for The Nation magazine. They are not the same and I apologize deeply to the Nation's author for not verifying this.
Rating:
Summary: The Need for an Independent Investigation
Review: Unable to demolish the heavily documented factual information in this book, which many people find understandably troubling, critics have sought to put this carefully researched work down by stating that there is no smoking gun and it does not prove its case. There are plenty of smoking guns and the author was not seeking to prove a case. He has supplied an abundance of information which vitally needs to be taken to the next level, that of a meticulous independent investigation. Some of the troubling points raised which so many find intolerable to confront that they seek to avoid their implications altogether are: 1) The many warnings received by the FBI and other agencies of the U.S. Government, including from Israel's Mossad. While many media sources decried as paranoiac the claim from Arab nations that Israelis stayed away from the World Trade Center on 9-11, it has been documented that the Mossad warned Washington and that a business half-owned by the Mossad terminated its lease before the attack, apparently aware that it was forthcoming based on the same warnings U.S. Government sources spurned. 2) The tremendous profits earned through put options based on huge drops in American and United airline stocks as of September 11. This option windfall was totally unprecedented in Wall Street annals and almost certainly had to be predetermined based on advance knowledge. No other plausible explanation suffices. 3) The report in European sources beginning with Paris newspaper Le Figaro, owned ironically by the controversial Carlyle Group, that the former head of ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency, provided the lead September 11 skyjacker Atta with $100,000. The former ISI head quietly resigned after 9-11 and nothing has been said about including him and this incident in any foregoing investigation of 9-11. 4) Links between the intelligence establishment and the terrorist skyjackers, as well as the two mysterious flight training schools in Venice, Florida run by Dutch nationals, one of whom received sponsorship support from none other than Catherine Harris. 5) The fact that, contrary to FAA guidelines, the planes which crashed into the Pentagon and in a Pennslyvania field were not scrambled. This routine measure was undertaken in the case of golfer Payne Stewart when his plane encountered difficulties, but not in the case of the post-World Trade Center terrorist destruction. Cheney lied on the record when he reported, "This was the president's call." It is a pro forma call based on FAA regulations. 6) U.S. Government archival evidence that an invasion of Afghanistan had been planned as far in advance of 9-11 as 1997, a point which needs to be carefully explored. These are some of the points made, and which need to be addressed by an independent investigator. The Bush Administration telegraphed its intentions by selecting initially definitive international dealmaker and Carlyle Group operative Henry Kissinger to head the official government 9-11 investigation. The current chairman, Tom Kean, is a former New Jersey governor with ties to the oil industry.
Rating:
Summary: Parallel with Putin's Russia
Review: This is isn't exactly a review, though I did find the book excellent but more of an additional piece of information for those who valued the book.
An interesting parallel to Ahmed's account of the Bush regime and 9/11 events are the Putin government in Russia and the conflict in Chechnya.
On September 22nd, 1999, after a spate of bombings in Russian cities blamed on Chechen terrorists an apparent explosion was averted in the city of Ryazan. Sacks of white powder and a detonator were found in the basement of an apartment building. The experts determined that the white powder was hexogen, a powerful explosive. The residents were evacuated, and soon congratulated by government officials with their 'second birthday'- having been saved from a deadly explosion. The local police in Ryazan took the trail of the failed terrorists who fled from the scene and, within 48 hours, were about to arrest the suspects. At that point, the government officials changed their story and claimed that the incident in Ryazan was not an averted terrorist act, but a 'training exercise' of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), a successor of the KGB. Nikolai Patrushev, director of the FSB, claimed that the sacks contained sugar and the detonator was a dummy. The Ryazan incident led to widespread speculations of the involvement of Russian secret services in all previous explosions. But despite numerous calls for investigation the government classified all Ryazan evidence for reasons of "national security". Over 40 percent of Russians questioned in a recent poll think it likely that the secret services were linked to the wave of bombings. These are outtakes of an eye witness account of the September 8th bombing. "My name is Yelena Morozova. I was born in Moscow in 1976. I lived on Guryanov Street, #19, apartment 100, in the Pechatniki district, Moscow, 10945. My father, Alexander Morozov, died in 1989. My mother, Lyubov Morozova, died in September 1999, when our apartment building exploded." "I was home, in my room, which was right above the entrance to the storage in the basement. A large truck parked close to the entrance, and three men started to unload something that looked like sacks of sugar, about 50 sacks. I remember that day because I could smell the exhaust pipe fumes from the truck in my apartment, and all this activity was rather irritating to me. My mother asked what all the noises and the smells were, and I explained to her, that three men are unloading sugar sacks or something of the sort. Even then I thought to myself, why would the little grocery store nearby need so much sugar. The truck drove off, and I remembered about it only after September 9, 1999. " "At 12:01a.m. on September 9, 1999, a bomb exploded in the basement storage of our apartment building. It exploded in the storage, which was directly below our apartment. " Would Chechen terrorists have the audacity to be driving around Moscow with sacks of hexogen disguised as sugar and repeat this in several other Russian cities? After the evidence of the Ryazan incident it seems more likely that the FSB could get away with this behaviour. An editorial in the The Wall Street Journal Europe put it this way "...The idea of a state security service committing mass murder would seem too ludicrous to be entertained until you remember that the FSB was the renamed KGB, whose raison d'etre for decades was basically institutionalized terror in the service of the Communist Party. It is not entirely unfathomable that some cell of the FSB might have done something truly horrific..." The bombings laid the groundwork for the furious military campaign against Chechnya and for the political rise of the previously obscure and unpopular Mr. Putin, whose relentless prosecution of the war has garnered a wave of Russian nationalism and a surge of popular support that propelled him into the presidency. The war has kept the huge Russian military machine and related industries in business and it has, been used as a cover and an excuse for censorship and the suppression of liberties. Also in case anyone was wondering, yes Chechnya does have oil and also some of Russia's most important oil pipelines connecting the Black and Caspian Seas traverse the country. ...
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