Joe Book Reviewer - The Looming Tower

It's been out for a bit, .....I know...but I finally had the chance to read it.

12 hours on planes in 2 days gave me time to do some reading.....can't really add much to what has already been said about Lawrence Wright's fantastic book The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 , but I can tell you it reads like a thriller and it is very clear where we're at with these terror groups and why and how their networks operate. This great book gets a 10 and should be read by all!

Some interesting finds......

- OBL's father was poor, he got in on the ground floor of the newly found oil fields of Saudi Arabia, the road infrastructure projects and many of the other civil engineering projects that built his multi-Billion $$ empire ........which BTW, an American(s) found. His father worked side by side with the laborers in the dirt while amassing his fortune, his nut son had the same mentality, living, eating side by side with his followers in the caves of Afghanistan.

- Sayid Qutb, the godfather of the jihad movement, actually started this jihad movement in the 1940's while living and working in the beautiful town of Greeley, Colorado. So how do you like that lefties?........GW Bush didn't cause the current terror / jihad movement........this has been brewing for decades........actually since the 7th century with the birth of Islam.

- Lawrence Wright points out that Al-Zawahiri and bin Laden have created neither a real intellectual movement nor a political platform nor a set of theological propositions nor a proper ideology but he letes you know Al Qaeda comes off as a bunch of fanatical, dysfunctional screaming death cult wack-nobs.....surprise.

- Most of those involved in Al-Qaeda, Al-Jihad, and other pre-Taliban terror groups were made up of engineers and scientists, not just rag-tag poverty stricken losers, in fact, American universities have more to do with creating Al-Qaeda than the fabled "Arab street."

- We could have pretty much nipped these terror movements in the bud if it weren't for the bickering beauracracies, the FBI and CIA and thier PC cowtowing... speaking of PC, thanks to a paranoid Clinton administration that failed to connect the dots with these terror groups, so much could have been averted . To be fair, the GW Bush administration can also be blamed for the handling of many parts of the war.

- One of the book's most fascinating characters is John O'Neill, the former FBI counterterrorism chief who understood the threat long before many in the U.S. government had heard of bin Laden. O'Neill's tireless vigilance was undercut by an abrasive personality that angered his counterparts in the CIA and perhaps contributed to the agency's unwillingness to share what it knew. Ultimately, O'Neill, a New Jersey native known for his fancy suits, multiple girlfriends and nights on the town, proved too bold a figure for the buttoned-down FBI. He resigned from the bureau on Aug. 22, 2001, and began a second career the following day as head of security at the World Trade Center. Guess where he was on September 11 2001?

- I knew that OBL was expelled from Saudi Arabia, but didn't know that by doing so it left him nearly destitute. He left behind his many businesses which his country paid him just pennies on the dollar....he's not the billionaire many think he is, more like in the ballpark of $10 MM.....max, and at times nearly penniless. OBL is a master marketer, he did a masterful job of whipping up a frenzy of fear and anit-American hate, this is very well documented. BTW, he's barely over 6 feet tall, not the purported 6 foot 6. Man, I'd love to kick his ass.

Note - The author Lawrence Wright comes to the table with impeccable liberal credentials, which include a long term at The New Yorker.

There are many more interesting items to post with regards to Afghanistan, Sudan, Zawahiri and the pro-American struggles within the Middle East but I lack the time, I'm a working man.

Read this book if you get the chance. If you are a passivist liberal that believes water boarding, the happenings at Guantanamo Bay and having dogs bark at terrorists are bad, then you might as well go back in the hole you've been living in and wait for the sword that one day may saw....not chop, but saw you're head off. These radicals have such a hatred for non-believing Muslims that it is irreversable.

What is amazing is how these terror leaders twist the Q'uran and their followers fall for it, an example.....the Q'ran says it is evil to commit suicide and evil to kill fellow Muslims, but these freaks add the caveat that if a you commit suicide and that action includes a murdered infidel non-Muslim, it's cool, or if a fellow innocent Muslim is murdered along with the infidel non-Muslim, it's cool too, because the innocent Muslim was just doing his duty by being there.

The horror of 9-11 woke me up and showed me not how much the world changed that day, but revealed to me how much it changed prior to 9-11. Some of my friends and aquaintences who read my blog may think I go overboard and extreme at times, but I'll tell you what, this threat is way too real, more widespread than communism and Nazism by far, look at the current state of Europe and the "Isamification" it is undergoing and the killing in the name of Allah taking place all over the world. The USA has been enjoying an incredible ride of wealth, good fortune and prosperity since the 1940's which by the way is extremely rare in world history.........let's not give away these freedoms to an enemy that wants nothing more than for you, me and the rest of the good guys to go back to the Dark Ages of the 7th century and live as 2nd / 3rd class citizens...or slaves, or worse.