Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America Reviews

• A real eye-opener!

  
  By on 2001-10-04
  I don't usually read books on history, politics, or world affairs, but I wish I had read this a long time ago. The author explains the complicated politics of the Middle East, along with ever-shifting loyalties, and our country's own manipulation by Pakistan, all of which contributed to the rise of Osama Bin Laden and worldwide terrorism. The book is detailed and well researched. Although it's not a "quick" read, it was so informative, I had a hard time putting it down.

  This book was written before the events of September 11 2001, but it gives the background information to put those events into perspective. It made me realize that in America, we've all been living in denial for the past 20 years, while overseas, a lot of anti-American (and anti-Western) sentiment has been brewing. I had no idea how many people out there would die to ensure the fall of Western civilization. We take our religious freedom, as well as separation of church and state, for granted in this country. I have never appreciated it as much as I do right now. Thank you to Mr. Bodansky for opening my eyes.
  
  

• Hindsight is 20/20

  
  By AKUDY3ATHWXFX on 2001-09-14
  This is one of the books that has sat on my "going to read" bookshelf until the tragic events of 9/11/01. Now that I have read it I am experiencing a wide array of emotions, not the least of which are anger and dismay. Not that my reading it before would have done anything but it would have at least lessened the shock and surprise at "who could do such a thing" and "how could something like this have happenned?". This book answers those questions. It is for readers who believe in the maxim "Know thy Enemy" for the author does a magnificent job of describing bin Laden and how he developed into the extremist terrorist who threatens the free world's way of life; how he developed his resources, and the complex network of followers who are willing to die for their beliefs. It's almost as interesting to read some of the reviews of this book written prior to the recent acts of terror. Those reviews discount bin Laden and the assertions Bodansky makes about him, claiming the author is trying to make money by sensationalizing the Islamist leader, his resources and his blueprint for destruction. Don't believe them. Yossef Bodansky has impeccable research to back up his statements and the indescribable horror of this last week solidifies his credibility.
  
  

• Osama-bin-Laden

  
  By A2RRHCZFVQ98KN on 2000-02-22
  The Saudi millionaire militant Osama Bin Laden and Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) have struck a deal under which the so-called Mujaheddin will carry out ``spectacular terrorist strikes'' in the heart of India in return for the ISI's support, protection and sponsorship, according to a new book on the world's most-wanted terrorist.

  The deal, solidified in Spring 1998, enables the ISI to strike in India while denying any involvement, says Yossef Bodansky, author of the recently released book Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America.

  The book also makes a stunning allegation: The ISI, in cahoots with the so-called Mujaheddin, sponsors, supports and trains terrorists throughout the world from centers in Afghanistan and Pakistan for operations in the Middle East, India (not just Kashmir), and increasingly, western Europe.

  In a compelling account of the ISI's nexus with Osama bin Laden and their flagrant involvement in subversive activity in India, Bodansky says the Pakistani spy agency is actively assisting bin Laden in the expansion of an Islamist infrastructure in India.

  It distributes cassettes and other propaganda material in which Bin Laden and others described India, along with the United States and Israel, as the greatest enemy of Islam. Primary venues for the distribution of Islamist propaganda and incitement material are the institutions run by the Ahl-i-Hadith religious charity, which is associated with Lashkar-e-Toiba Islamist Kashmiri organisation.

  Bodansky writes that under the command of Abdul Karim Tunda, the Lashkar-e-Toiba has already been responsible for several terrorist attacks in India. In addition, Bin Laden has major cells in the southern city of Bangalore and Hyderabad which support Harkar-ul Ansar, a Pakistan-sponsored Islamist organisation that actively participates in the jihad in Kashmir and trains mujaheddin for jihad fronts all over the world.

  What makes Bodansky's revelations all the more interesting is that he is the Director of the US Congressional Task Force on Terrorism headed by Congressman Bill McCollum. Although the disclosures in the book are widely known and privately acknowledged in the intelligence community of which Bodansky is a part, the US executive _ and the American media _ have preferred to tread softly on Pakistan on the terrorism issue.

  Bodansky's book paints ISI as a sinister and malignant terrorist outfit that is spreading mayhem not just in India but elsewhere in the world in the name of Islam. He says the US strikes against bin Laden and the terrorist camps in Afghanistan have only reinforced the relationship between the ISI and bin Laden.

  Bodansky says Pakistan promoted Islamism as the sole ideology capable of containing and reversing the breakup of Pakistan on ethno-national lines. ``Consequently, the ISI's support for and sponsorship of sisterly Islamic terrorist movements throughout the Arab world became a cornerstone of Pakistan's national security policy,'' he writes.

  The book has explicit details of ISI-run terrorist training camps right through the 1980s and how it was largely aimed at India while also feeding terrorism elsewhere in the world.

  At one point during the Afghan war, says Bodansky, the ISI kept even the CIA out of these camps. This was because the ISI wanted to hide the extent of training and support non-Afghan volunteers were getting at these camps. Most numerous were the thousands of Islamic trainees from Indian Kashmir and to a lesser extent Sikhs from the Punjab.

  In one particularly damning passage that shows how recklessly the ISI turned Pakistan into a ``place of pilgrimage for terrorists,'' Bodansky reveals that in the Fall of 1988, the spy and subversion agency instructed all Pakistani legations to issue ``special tourist'' visas to any Islamist aspiring to fight in the Afghan Jihad.

  These ``visas'' were provided, frequently along with paid airline tickets, to volunteers who lacked proper travel documents as well as those who gave false names and were wanted by their governments for terrorism and subversion. C. Rajghutta
  
  

• Please allow me to introduce myself I'm a man of wealth and

  
  By A2EQ74Y24BHHIF on 2001-09-25
  "Won't you get my name; what's quite puzzling you is the nature of my game". I guess we now know that the game is a jihad-a holy war against America as the antithesis of Islam's fundamentalist values and that's what this book is about. Writing from his perspective as director of Florida congressman Bill McCollum's Congressional Task Force on Terrorism, Bodansky knows of which he speaks. One can quibble with his version, but I think the jury is in on Osama Bin Laden's ability to carry out mass acts of terrorism where thousands of innocent people are needlessly sacrificed to his ideal of Islamic justice. Bin Laden has been the world's most wanted Terrorist for a number of years and it's a black mark on the policies of the Clinton-Gore administration that they made it so difficult for our intelligence agencies to apprehend such men.

  Bodansky posits how Bin Laden has become a hero to scores of radical Muslim youth. He recounts the litany of his terrorist attacks on American embassies in Africa and on India while in league with the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service. Sponsorship of Islamic terrorist movements has become a part of Paki national security policy and Bin Laden plays no small part in this exercise. The role of Pakistan in recruiting and soliciting radical Islamic militants is a chilling forecast of things to come.

  The Taliban has now taken its religious views to the extreme and has "taken its show on the road". This will unfortunately lead to resolute retaliation by the West which will in turn lead to much blood letting. This book will provide the interested reader with a lot of the history of what has made up and what has gone into the resistance by Bin Laden to the UN forces in Somalia and elsewhere . It will also provide an in depth view of the operations of terrorist networks as they have become spread across that section of the world that borders the southern and eastern Mediterranean. Read this book and prepare for what is sure to come.
  
  

• Bodansky Biased

  
  By ANG8OC7ETWVYG on 2001-11-03
  Here's the deal; I am middle of the road politically, but have leaned conservative in terms of the current crisis. First of all, I thought this would be a biography of bin Laden, but it really isn't. It's full of detailed minutae about terrorist organizations; a dizzying, detailed cloud of specific dates, names, summits, meetings, declarations, communiques, etc. Bodansky doesn't focus on bin Laden and the book is lacking in the big picture department.

  Second, I wondered how Bodansky could know all of these "facts." He details the names, dates, locations, even conversations of SECRET terrorist meetings and SECRET agreements and SECRET government sponsorships of terrorists. I looked up his list of sources: it's all newspaper articles, most of them from Arab publications. Most of the time he simply states information as objective fact (he knows how the intelligence organizations of closed societies like Iran and Saudi Arabia collect information, make decisions, etc.) with zero footnotes or reference to sources. Sometimes he mentions the information came from a named source; the vast majority of the time oral sources are POSITIVELY ANONYMOUS.

  Third, he leans, bends, prostrates in a blatantly conservative direction. He roundly blasts Clinton at several points, even claiming that "if certain terrorist sources are to be believed" Clinton made an evil deal with the Islamists; supposedly that the US would tolerate the overthrow of the Egyptian government and installation of an Islamist regime in return for no terrorist attacks on US troops in Bosnia.

  I was further perplexed by his claim that the President of Iran, widely considered to be a moderate in favor of liberal reforms, is personally involved in planning terrorist acts against the US. Bodansky asserts that Iran was behind the bombings of US embassies in Africa. Really? Why haven't the American people been told? It took us years to figure out a couple of Libyans were responsible for the Lockerbie disaster. Once we had the facts we were relentless in our pressure on Libya to hand them over. If our government knows Iran bombed our embassies, why are we not doing the same with them? The cause of the crash of TWA flight 800 has never been determined. But omnicient Bodansky knows it was IN FACT a terrorist bombing, that Tehran was behind it, he even knows the type and placement of the explosive; "A small, twin-charge bomb was placed against the middle of the forward wall of the central fuel tank... The twin charges were a blast charge made of powerful plastic explosives (SEMTEX-H class)... The direction of the explosion was toward the tail of the aircraft (p.179)."

  The back of the book says Bodansky is "an internationally renowned military and threat analyst, is the director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism..." I noticed that both of the plug quotes on the book are from staunch conservatives: Jean Kirkpatrick (former Reagan appointee who fired off a letter with fellow arch conservatives to President Bush urging expansion of the war to Iran and Iraq) and Fred Barnes.

  I did some research on Bodansky on the internet and found a biography (biased also, as it is written by Fred Abood of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, but the only profile of Bodansky my search found) that states: 1) Bodansky was the editor of the Israeli Air Force's official magazine in the 1970's, 2) , Bodansky became the technical director of the newsletter JINSA (The Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs), 3) . In the early years of the first Reagan administration (1980-84), Bodansky was hired as a Defense Department consultant, 4) In 1985, shortly after Naval intelligence employee Jonathan Pollard was caught as an Israeli spy, Bodansky dropped out of sight. According to sources, Bodansky was one of Pollard's controllers and had, they say, always operated as an agent of LEKEM, the Israeli defense ministry's technological espionage branch, 5) . In 1989, Bodansky became director of the House REPUBLICAN (my caps) Research Committee's "Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare."

  The man is a former Israeli citizen who now works for REPUBLICAN congresspeople. In fact, the "task force" is unofficial. It's a body dreamed up by Republicans, given an official sounding name, and appointed conservative members. (Rep. Saxton, the "task force " chair, admits as much in his remarks to Congress on August 7, 1998; "As the chairman of a group of Republicans... [known as] the Task Force on Terrorism and U.N. Conventional Warfare.") This blasts Bodansky positively out of the orbit of what we would call "objectivity." My concern is that people will buy this book, thinking it's an objective account of bin Laden and the Islamist movement, as I did (this book is now a best seller here at Amazon; it glares off the shelves as the featured bin Laden book at a major book chain). I did a search on bin Laden books and thought, hey, here's one that sounds good, and bought it. I'm sure much of this stuff is true; a great deal jibes with what I've read since 9/11 (Pakistan has been an incubator for terrorism, Saudi Arabia has tons of Islamist sympathizers and citizen patrons, etc.) but I have no doubts much of the content is pro-Israel rhetoric. And it's packaged in a way that makes it sound like an objective study, which it clearly ain't. Which parts are true and what is propaganda I couldn't say. But I can say for certain it's a dry read chock full of minutae, NOT a biography of bin Laden, and deviously biased.

  Americans want to know about bin Laden, and this book clearly appears to be the number one book they are snatching up to learn about him and the Islamists. It is shaping opinions with false, biased, uncited information, and this is positively dangerous.
  
  

• Staggering Amount of Data
  By A2887J6P8VPB5H on 2001-08-26
  Whatever can be collated into a bio of Osama Bin Laden is in here. An exploration of the mind of terrorism. A lot of history on the Iranian-Sudanese axis that resisted the US-UN in Africa and its activities on the Horn of Africa. An almost exausting amount of data on various terrorist actors and their interrelationships. Also dealt with extensively is the networking process of using legitimate economic development and humanitarian aid organizations to create a shadow economic network to pass money and materiele around. Also the legitimate activities of these organizations can serve propagandistic purposes. The book also details the involvement of Pakistan's ISI in the development of terrorist camps and networks; as well as Pakistan's role in the evolution of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The book is more than an attempt to biographize Osama bin Laden. It is a study of terrorist networks in general, how they exist and survive, and how the operate.
  
  
• A comprehensive analysis of contemporary Islamic militancy.
  By on 1999-02-19
  Once again, Yossef Bodansky brings his insight and expertise to the problem of Osama Bin Laden, an ideological, Islamic zealot considered responsible for many American deaths. Rather than adopt the simplistic approach put forth by "Foggy Bottom" -- that says in essence that Bin Laden is an independent terrorist and all that is required is to spend perhaps another billion or two to kill Bin Laden in order to halt all major terror strikes -- Bodansky spells out in detail the synergism between Bin Laden and major Arab countries, such as Syria and Iran. Bodansky places forth the metaphor of Bin Laden as one who represents radical Islam in ALL its depth, along with his co-conspirators. After Bodansky proves that Bin Laden is an instrument, rather than an independent, Islamic aberration, the entire spectrum of world terror comes into focus along with the realization that removing the tip of one tentacle of an octopus, is counterproductive at best and lethal at worst. Bodansky's encyclopedic grasp of world events, coupled with his talents as a word smith makes this book his most important and a must read for all. On a scale of one to five, I rate this a ten.
  
  
• meagre substance badly presented by an ignorant author
  By ANDSZNUHZS85V on 2001-10-30
  Read "Taliban" by Ahmed Rashid instead.

  The good parts of this books are the brief biographical bit about bin Laden; the emphasis on Pakistani (esp. ISI) involvement; and details about Iranian strategies and participation. They were not worth wading through this 400+ pages polemic to get.

  Strike 1: The book is mislabeled.
  Chapter 1 is about bin Laden. Chapter 2 is somewhat about bin Laden. The other chapters have only an occasional mention of him.

  Strike 2: Ayman al-Zawahiri is the COO to bin Laden's CEO in HizbAllah International, and so has far greater involvement with specific terrorist acts. He figures more strongly than bin Laden, but get less coverage in the text.

  Strike 3: There are so many groups mentioned here that keeping track is overwhelming. appendices relating them each to the other would be most helpful.
  One out: not well organized or packaged.

  Strike 1: The narrative is weak, the analysis thin and full of surmise and conjecture. Periodic jabs are taken at Clinton's policies, while Bush I's 'love 'em and leave 'em' approach to Afghanistan and Pakistan -- abandoning them to a Kalashnikov culture from 1989 to 1993 -- is ignored. Israel and 'The Jews' are mentioned as co-indicted with the US -- certainly as a red herring, perhaps to foster sympathy for Israel -- but no information about any operations targeting Israel are mentioned anywhere in the text.

  Strike 2: As a couple other reviewers have said, he can't go ten pages without saying 'spectacular operation', 'spectacular terrorist operation,' or 'these were not idle threats.' These are the most obvious bits of an extensive seam of purple prose riddling the book.

  Strike 3: Too much ink is devoted to long verbatim quotes from windy overwritten communiques by various terrorist organizations, which irritate then bore. The book should be at least 100 pages shorter. Two out: not well written.

  Strike 1: The author does not know the history of Islamic societies (and should read Ira Lapidus' excellent work of that name). On the second page of the introduction, he says "during the eleventh century the Muslim world suffered a series of major defeats: The Crusaders occupied the Levant... while in the Iberian Peninsula a Christian coalition... began the campaign to evict the Muslims from Spain and Portugal" Far from occupying the entire Levant (the Nile - Oxus area), the Crusaders occupied no more than some bits of what are now Israel, Syria and Lebanon, and mostly they just occupied a handful of ports and the hinterland within 20 miles of the coast. By 1300 they were all gone. At the time, the Crusaders were crude barbarians by comparison to the civilized and technologically advanced societies of Egypt, Iraq, and Syria. The Crusaders had a far larger (and negative) impact on their erstwhile fellow Christians in Constantinople in 1204 than ever they did in the Levant, indeed facilitating the Muslim conquest of the Balkans.

  In Iberia, the Reconquest began with Charlemagne in the 9th Century, with major surges around 1085 (Toledo), 1212 (Las Navas de Tolosa), and 1492 (Grenada). Between 1099 and 1529 the (Muslim) Turks conquered Anatolia (making it Turkish rather than Greek), Greece, Bulgaria, Moldavia and Wallachia (Romania), Serbia, and Hungary, losing only Hungary before 1815 (in 1699). As late as 1700 Muslims ruled all of India. On the whole it was the Christian world that was suffering the defeats before 1700, not the Muslim one. Muslims were also victorious against the Hindu, Buddhist, and African worlds in these years, giving better than they got worldwide. Bodansky waves his hand and says that Muslim rulers "revived religious extremism as the source of their legitimacy... so the Muslim world was swept with ... 'anti-intellectual rage'... Thus the Muslim world has been in paralysis since religious extremism rose in the twelfth century." It would be interesting to hear what he thinks about the Inquisition or Jerry Falwell.

  Strike 2: The author has problems distinguishing Western from Modern. Phones are modern; jeans and carbonated soda are Western. The author is not alone in this problem: many thoughtful people in the Orient, Occident, India and Africa have problems with it also. The breakdown of the family in America is just one sign of it (what Americans call a nuclear family would be seen as a sad fragment of a family in much of the world). Bin Laden is himself both utterly Modern as well as totally (though by most standards heterodox) Islamic. A large part of his achievement is that reconciliation internally as well as within the organizations he's been part of. The interesting question here is: Why did Modernity arise in the Occident not in, say, Sung China of the 12th century? [See "Rethinking World History", Marshall Hodgson] For Bodansky to call Islam backwards (p. XVI) is a mark of his ignorance. Is Christianity backwards too? Hinduism?

  Strike 3: Bodansky says that "the seemingly unstoppable spread of Westernization... motivates the terrorists... Their individual struggles are the essence of the Islamist movement against Westernization." Bodansky is wrong. Most Muslim people are ruled by military dictatorships and monarchies, without the opportunities and freedoms that many Occidentals take for granted. Why have a pointless impoverished, oppressed and hopeless life when you can have a meaningful death, say recruiters to prospective suicide terrorists/martyrs? Naming the US operation "Enduring Freedom" must seem a bitter irony to most Muslims, who have no prospect for any such thing. The US support for those regimes at high (though not limitless, as the Shah found) levels pours salt into the wound. Three outs: not well conceived or knowledgeably produced.
  
  

• Have to Agree - Facts, Fiction and Some Manipulation - Shame
  By on 1999-11-21
  As a counter-terrorism professional I am surprised that Bodansky, a respected former CT specialist would stray into wild speculation and horrific rumor. His basic facts on Bin Laden are very solid, however you'd have to have a proper clearance to know what is fact and what is not. I had to sort through all sorts of silliness to get some hard facts. Many times I would throw the book across the room after a whole chapter and then find a pearl of wisdom a page later.

  Additionally his attempt to claim the Clinton administration attempted to cut deals with the Islamists and would condone the fall of Mubarak is just plain ridiculousness. Shame for even writing it down. I don't know about him but I have never seen an administration so hell bent on combatting terrorism through sheer effort as this one (William Casey aside).

  Bodansky has hidden behind his anonymous sources which are very obviously Egyptian government. He makes Hassan Turabi appear to be the next Ayatollah Khomeini. I think this book was a poor attempt to challenge Claire Sterling's "The Terrorist Network" but with an Islamic twist ... if I hear "spectacular attack" again (used over 50 times, I'm sure) I'll choke.
  
  

• I should have known better.....
  By A2KR95L9RAE1N7 on 2002-04-02
  Against my better judgement I picked up a copy of this book. I knew Mr. Bodansky twenty years ago when we were both new in Washington. At the time I was doing research and work on terrorism and he would often appear at the Johns Hopkins branch campus where I was based. Even then he would offer incredibly wild claims and assertions, usually completely out of line with anything anyone else was presenting. His perspective in those days was profoundly anti-arab and his ability to perceive massive conspiracies and world-wide plots that no one else saw was nothing short of amazing. As he does in this book, when challenged on many of his claims he would take refuge in the old dodge "I can't reveal my sources because of secrecy." He still relies on this evasion. Nonetheless, in trying to catch up on recent literature in the field, I obtained a copy of this book.

  Things clearly haven't changed much in twenty years except that he's managed to gain some degree of credibility by briefly working for a Congressman or two and then milking the connection for all it's worth. As other reviewers have observed, Mr. Bodansky fails to provide corroboration for many of his claims, especially the most outrageous ones, and inserts his own opinions and speculation without making it clear to the reader where he is doing so. The book is poorly written, often piling up page after page of uncorroborated and often incredible information without much attempt at serious analysis or explanation. In the end, one might wonder whether anything he's written here is very accurate. There's certainly no way to tell from the book itself, and so much of it is completely at variance with all other sources on the subject that one can only guess. Moreover, the fact that when he wrote the book he was working for people who were deeply anti-Clinton might lead one to suspect that perhaps his charges about the Clinton administration have more to do with a domestic partisan agenda than reality. Certainly, there is nothing to support some of the more outrageous allegations he makes about the Clinton administration, though given the amount of time, money and effort spent digging into Clinton's actions one would think if these things had actually happened, someone besides Mr. Bodansky would have reported it.

  So as I say, I should have known better. I know of no credible expert on the subject of terrorism who took Mr. Bodansky's efforts seriously twenty years ago, and there is nothing in this book that would make me take him any more seriously today.

  There are so many better works on Osama bin Laden (try Peter Bergen's excellent book for a start) and on terrorism. No one should waste their time with anything as simplistic, poorly presented, and of questionable veracity as this.
  
  

• Totally Disagree....
  By A168F1S76HS8S4 on 1999-12-18
  As a muslim and as a Saudi, I believe that this book has many mistakes about Bin Laden. First of all, I don't agree with the title "...Who Declared War on America" because we all , muslims, know that America had declared war against us before him. Take a lot at what's going on in Iraq, Palastine, Sudan ..etc. and you would believe that this is the truth. Bin Laden is a MAN who is fighting for all muslims rights in the world......thanks.
  
  
• worthless and nothing to say about the man in question
  By on 2001-10-05
  When I bought the book, I expeted this to be biography of a man
  who has the whole world after him after Sep 11, 2001 but all the book talks about is the Islamic fundamentalists and extremists. The book just mentions Bin Ladin approx. seven times but the subject remained fundamentalists and extremism NO BIN LADIN.
  I hope someone writes a real biography to explain why Bin Ladin is so adamant about taking revenge from Americans on what exactly?
  
  
• Don't waste your time! This book is very poorly written...
  By on 2001-11-16
  This book is driving me to my first-ever Amazon.com review, because it is quite possibly the most poorly written book I have ever read: its signal-to-noise ratio is truly atrocious, it doesn't tell a coherent story, and its overt biases become really overbearing by the end.

  First, as many readers below have commented, the book gives a mind-numbing amount of very precise detail about people, groups, fatwas, decrees, communiques, meetings, newspaper articles, etc. It's almost as if the author didn't choose to edit any of his raw sources, and instead just included them verbatim within the main text in order to stretch a 50-page story into a 406-page book. You, the reader, are left to do the mental work the author should have done in the first place: sift through the noise in all of the sources, and put together the real story.

  Second, once you spend the effort putting together the story, you realize that there are some serious holes in it! For example, the author spends 7 chapters and 200 pages describing in (painful) detail what an uber-organization the world-wide terrorist networks represent. They have the experience in driving the US out of Somalia, they have the infrastructure within Saudi Arabia to pull off the Khobar and Riyadh bombings, they have the theological grounding in which to act, etc., etc. Then suddenly, on the first page of Chapter 8, we read, "the participants at the meeting resolved to reverse the sorry state of the [terrorist] movement...the jihad had sunk to such a low due to...'splintering, disputes, and inability to consider their risks.'" Why did this "sorry-state" suddenly arise? Where were the examples of "splintering" and "disputes?" The author gives no reason for this sudden turnabout, either from his sources or from an analysis of the political situation. In short, the author is disguising a basically incomplete and somewhat weak story by throwing out a dizzying array of other source material. (Other reviewers, I might note, have also commented on the fact that the author misses the forest for the trees, that they didn't quite see what the big point was, etc.)

  Lastly, the author's biases, by the end of the book, just get to be too much to stomach. I'm a Republican, but even I found myself mentally defending Clinton against some of charges brought forward by the author. For example, the author spends a lot of time describing, in excruciating detail, the build-up of the terrorist organizations in Kosovo, and how they would be used as a launching pad for "spectacular" terrorist strikes against Western Europe. Then, when the US begins hunting down and apprehending the terrorists, the author implies that this was a mistake! On page 298, the author writes, "With the Islamists yearning for excuses to strike out, the Clinton administration could not have been more accommodating." I mean, what was the Clinton administration supposed to do? Was it supposed to NOT arrest the terrorists, and to LET them act out on their plans? Come on!

  Unfortunately, this is the first book I've read that is relevant to the current situation, so I can't give any other book recommendations at the moment (other reviewers have, which I plan on checking out...). However, for all the reasons I've listed above, I would certainly advise others to search out alternative books before spending the time and mental energy to get through this one. It's just not worth it...
  
  

• blitzkrieg rained and the fire raged, pleased to meet you
  By A2EQ74Y24BHHIF on 2001-09-14
  "Won't you get my name; what's quite puzzling you is the nature of my game". I guess we now know that the game is a jihad-a holy war against America as the antithesis of Islam's fundamentalist values; that's what this book is about. Writing from his perspective as director of Florida congressman Bill McCollum's Congressional Task Force on Terrorism, Bodansky knows of which he speaks.

  Bodansky posits how Bin Laden has become a hero to scores of radical Muslim youth. He recounts the litany of his terrorist attacks on American embassies in Africa and his attacks on India while in league with the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service. Sponsorship of Islamic terrorist movements has become a part of Paki national security policy and Bin Laden plays no small part in this exercise. The role of Pakistan in recruiting and soliciting radical Islamic militants is a chilling forecast of things to come.

  The Taliban has now taken its religious views to the extreme and has "taken its show on the road... This book will provide the interested reader with a lot of the history of what has made up and what has gone into the resistance by Bin Laden to the UN forces in Somalia and elsewhere . It will also provide an in depth view of the operations of terrorist networks as they have become spread across that section of the world that borders the southern and eastern Mediterranean. Read this book...
  
  
  

• Very Scholastic, Not for Everyone
  By A3B3N9ZPD4TFKQ on 2000-07-12
  I confess, I bought this book at a regular bookshop (not Amazon). Thus, I did not have at hand the dozen-plus reviews available on-line. Upon reading the title and the comments on the jacket, I was very interested in reading what I expected to be a biography of this man. I thought I would find information about his childhood, his upbringing, his personal life, pivotal events which shaped his activities of recent years. To my disappointment, none of this was present. In fact the book isn't really about Osama bin Laden at all; rather, it is a scholarly description of the radical Islamist movement worldwide, with only occassional mention of the man whose photo appears on the cover. I would certainly recommend it for students of political science, or sociologists who already have a thorough knowledge of Islam as well as governmental systems in Africa and the Middle-East, but the general reader should be prepared for a broad, intricate, academic discussion about international trends, and not a narrative about an individual.
  
  
• Prophetic Account of a Chilling Subject
  By on 2001-12-31
  As might be imagined, "Bid Laden, The Man Who Declared War on America" is an alarming book. And the fact that it was written two years before 9/11/01 makes it more so, since the narrative puts the events of that day into the context of an unfolding political reality that has been too long in the making to be resolved any time soon. The title is somewhat misleading, and I picked the book up thinking it was going to be a biography of sorts. However, other than some perfunctory material on Bid Laden's youth, the study isn't really about Bid Laden himself so much as it is about the violent political movement, of which he is a leader, that has evolved from Islamic eschatology. Bodansky takes his readers on a trip through the snake pit of Middle Eastern and radical Islamic politics, which he portrays as a world where wealth, self-interest, violence, religious doctrine, and state policy are intertwined inextricably. It's also a world where loyalties or even strategic alliances don't seem to exist much beyond ephemeral alignments around tactical objectives that shift with the political wind. In this light, Bodansky - who is a consultant to the U.S. government - reveals much about our supposed friends in the region. He describes Pakistan as one of the primary architects behind the terrorist infrastructure managed by Bid Laden and other leading Islamists. He portrays the Saudi government as a craven and tottering regime which continues to provide lavish funding to this infrastructure as a kind of protection money to keep it's activities away from Saudi soil. Bodansky, of course, turns his cynical eye on the U.S. too, reminding us that we ourselves collaborated in birthing this movement, nurturing its spectacularly successful war against our one-time enemy, the Soviet Union. As for the Islamists, they see themselves now as simply continuing to fight the same war, having destroyed one "superpower" and now taking aim at the other in their campaign to overturn the prevailing world order. Bodansky depicts them as dedicated to a eschatological vision in which all secular states are overthrown by whatever means necessary and replaced by a kind of global Islamic government, which will usher in heavenly peace and glory. The parallels between this vision and that of messianic communism are as striking as they are ironic, since both justify political violence as a tool necessary for achieving a glorious albeit it ill-defined future. Of the two visions, the Islamic seems more dangerous in the nuclear age, since doctrinaire communists, being atheists, were made cautious by their belief that they had to achieve their heaven on earth. Bodansky quotes extensively from Bid Laden and others, and their words make clear that they believe that in a global conflagration they would be sending themselves to heaven and their enemies to hell, not inhibiting themselves with much of a disincentive. Bodansky seems to know almost too much about some things, leading one to question the extent to which he might be interjecting his own supposition into this narrative as ostensibly factual material. For example, he states unequivocally the Bid Laden already possesses nuclear weapons, although not necessary the means to deliver them. While this may be true, Bodanksy doesn't provide much basis for his startling conclusion, nor for many of the other observations he makes about the private relationships said to exist between various terrorist factions and governments. In his introduction, he addresses the problem of the credibility of his material by saying that elucidating his sources would compromise their security. While on one level this seems entirely fair, it has the unfortunate effect of relieving the author of a burden which all academic writers should have to bear of drawing a crisp line between conjecture and well-grounded reporting. Despite these limitations, the big picture Bodansky draws clearly has the force of much knowledge behind it, and it is acquires a prophetic aura now in light of the events occurring after the book was written. Most Americans - myself included - are dangerously ignorant about Islam in all its manifestations, both good and bad. While this book, focussing as it does on a violent fringe, probably should be read alongside more balanced treatments of Islamic culture, I recommend it to anyone trying to make sense of the new geo-political environment in which we have suddenly found ourselves.
  
  
• False Colors
  By on 2001-11-26
  I purchased this book because of an opening excerpt available at Amazon.com, which was well written and informative. The book as a whole however is untrustworthy. One comes upon this realization as a reader given the fact there are no sources cited. At the same time the author writes as if he had been present at all sorts of terrorist confabs. One example that took the cake for me was the description of a meeting between Saddam Hussein and his two sons. My sense was also that Arabic newspapers and Islamist organizations have been quoted out of context; the quotes are partial and limited, and a reader realizes these quotes could have been part of an explanation of terrorist acts, not an endorsement of them, as the author states or implies.
  
  
• On the Contrary
  By AT9YSY20RJUDX on 2002-08-09
  Contrary:
  His book, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, was sort of a quickie meant to exploit the huge interest in the Saudi-born Islamist at the time. It may have sold well but scholars meticulous about facts and those knowledgeable regarding bin Laden quickly detected mistakes in the book and pointed them out. One such scholar is Peter L Bergen, an American journalist who had interviewed bin Laden near Jalalabad in 1997 as member of a CNN crew.
  In his authoritative book, Holy War Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden, Bergen wrote how Bodansky misinformed readers while describing bin Laden. "Bodansky describes the teenage bin Laden visiting Beirut to drink, womanize and get involved in bar brawls. Those who know bin Laden, however, describe him as a deeply religious teenager who married at the age of seventeen. Perhaps Bodansky confused Osama with one of his twenty or so half-brothers." Another Bodansky blunder is narrated in the following words by Bergen: "Bodansky also writes that in 1994 bin Laden traveled to London, where he 'settled' in the London suburb of Wembley, a notion that Arab dissidents and journalists living in London find amusing." All accounts of bin Laden's life to date missed out on this vital piece of information and it was left to Bodansky to report, while failing to provide any evidence that the alleged terrorist mastermind had once settled in London.
  That is not all. Bergen highlighted another example in his book to show that Bodansky never really cared about checking his facts. Over to Bergen again: "Bodansky makes another fantastic assertion: that the 1996 crash of TWA flight 800 in Long Island Sound, which killed 230 people, was a joint operation between Iran and bin Laden. However, an exhaustive two-year investigation by the National Transport Safety Board and the FBI ruled out terrorism in the TWA 800 crash." Mercifully, the investigation was carried out by the National Transport Safety Board and the FBI and not by someone like Bodansky, otherwise the US would now be raining bombs and rockets on Iran.
  The above examples, pinpointed by a respected American author, about Bodansky's shortcomings as a scholar have damaged his reputation. Few, if any, would believe his latest disclosures about bin Laden keeping in view his lack of credibility. For Bodansky to make such claims when the world's only superpower doesn't know bin Laden's whereabouts is ridiculous. It also shows Bodansky's anti-Pakistan bias. It would be naive on the part of any scholar of standing to believe that the ISI would shelter bin Laden when the government of President General Pervez Musharraf is going out of the way to cooperate with the US in hunting down remnants of the al-Qaeda and Taliban. Lt Gen Ehsanul Haq, a trusted lieutenant of General Musharraf, commands the ISI and to think that it would disobey the Army chief's orders is absurd. The ISI in the past may have been more loyal to the Army chief than the civilian prime minister but it is now an altogether different situation. The armed forces are fully entrenched in power and the ISI is just an extension of the military government. There cannot be any dichotomy in the policies of President General Musharraf and the ISI chief because they are one and the same.
  Beside, it must kept in mind that bin Laden has always been very critical of the Musharraf government owing to its close ties with the US and it would be suicidal for him to trust Islamabad. In fact, bin Laden in an interview with the writer in 1998 bitterly asked why successive governments in Pakistan trusted America instead of God Almighty. Bodansky's claim that bin Laden was being protected by the ISI debunks the commonly held belief that there have never been intimate ties between him and recent Pakistani governments.

  Pakistan as a forefront nation:
  The delay in getting bin Laden is beginning to unnerve the US authorities and President George W Bush, who earlier accused the Saudi-born Islamic militant of being the sponsor of acts of terrorism worldwide, is now saying that the war on terror isn't about an individual. The failure of the American troops in killing or capturing bin Laden in Afghanistan despite being fully in control of that country is prompting Washington to pass on the buck to Pakistan. In fact, search operations for al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives in Pakistan are proving less costly, easier and successful compared to those in Afghanistan due to the fact that Pakistani soldiers and militiamen rather than the Americans are in the forefront of the campaign and are taking losses. In Afghanistan, the US is spending much more by paying off the ill-disciplined Afghan fighters and also exposing its soldiers to risks while hunting down al-Qaeda and Taliban members. The Pakistanis are doing the job rather cheaply and then there is no real risk to the Americans who stay in the background and provide technical know-how and intelligence on the wanted men and their likely hideouts in Pakistan. It also pays to get scholars such as Bodansky to put more pressure on Islamabad by authoritatively speculating that bin Laden was being protected by the ISI and was.
  Pakistan has taken a great risk of allying itself with the U.S in their war on terrorism. The fact of the matter is that the Pakistan military and not the American forces undertook all key arrests of al-Qaeeda. We have lost considerable number of forces; as well as attacks on foreigners in Pakistan by disgruntled Al-Qaeeda forces. It is quite disheartening to read a text as this and find such unappreciation.

  Conclusion:
  I respectfully state Mr. Yossef Bodansky that your assertions are incorrect and untrue. You do not provide facts and proof to support your assertions.
  
  

• A Biased Analysis of Islamic Fundamentalism
  By A21AMAYNGBYAS0 on 2001-02-11
  After reading this book, I must say I'm thoroughly displeased. Bodansky greatly exaggerates the power of Bin Laden so that readers like us may get scared and buy his book. He wants us to believe that Islamic fundamentalism is a threat, yet he only presents one side - the side that is presented everyday by the American and Western media. He never analyzes the fascinating part of Bin Laden's mysterious life - why he does what he does. Moreover, he never explains the oxymoronic nature of the phrase "Islamic terrorism." That is, "Islam" literally means peace or submission, so an "Islamic terrorist" would be a "peaceful, submitting terrorist." Plus, he never goes back and analyzes the religion itself. If he had, we would know that terrorism is absolutely not allowed in Islam. As a result, the book comes off as nothing more than a 19th century Islamiphobic tabloid. If you want the truth, you'll need to find an objective source - not the prejudiced, sensationalist, subjective opinions of an ill-researched reporter like Bodansky. Thus, I do NOT recommend this book, because the only way you can learn from it, is if you already know about the topic.
  
  
• This is an important, serious book
  By A321ZSDAMPMS9V on 2002-02-21
  Yosesef Bodansky has written a serious book about Bin Laden and the terrorist world in which he operates (operated?). It was published in 1999 long before the terrorist attacks on 9/11.

  Bodansky links together the last 20 or so years of Islamic terrorism� their funding, the BCCI and it's collapse, al Qaida, their training, their links to Iran, Pakistan's ISI and its politics, their organization and their goals. He presents a picture of a global organization, not isolated individuals acting independently. He cites the religious and intellectual leadership that reconciles Sunni and Shiite differences and uniting them in the greater cause of jihad against the infidel west. He clarifies how such leadership has justified the elimination of opposition in their homelands based on un-Islamic policies. These are of course self-proclaimed leaders.

  Is this a biography of Bin Laden? It is certainly not a typical biography. We don't learn about his childhood, his relationship with his siblings and parents, and whether he got good grades in school. We do learn about the relationships that the author believes made him the man that he is. In fact in the first 2 chapters the author presents a picture of a man that you might admire, if you didn't know what was to come.

  After the 9/11 attacks, I saw educated, English speaking Muslins living in the mid east interviewed on television denying Bin Laden�s involvement, demanding that the US show their proof of his involvement, and citing him as an Islamic hero of the Afghan resistance. I thought it they were just lying supporters of a terrorists. I saw the Palestinians dancing in the streets. Are these one and the same people? Why would people who danced in the streets at the murder of thousands of people that they had never met, have an ethical or moral problem with lying? Bodansky's book explains much of this sentiment. I did not like what I read.

  Some reviewers have cited a lack of footnotes as the reason for dismissing this book. I am amazed how important this seems to be to these readers. There are five pages of sources listed at the end of the book citing over one hundred sources! Given the events of 9/11 and the subsequent disclosures of Bin Laden's organization that have come out of Afghanistan, I cannot take these criticisms seriously.

  Badandky's book focuses on the American embassy bombings in Africa and what lead up to them. But, his last two chapters, "The Bin Laden Plans" and "What's Next", are chilling, and accurate. This is an important book to read if you are interested in trying to understand more than the man. Bin Laden is/was a part of a terrorist movement; he helped create an infrastructure that will exist beyond his demise.

  I highly recommend this book.
  
  

• Unreliable
  By on 2002-10-30
  Several books have now been published on Bin Laden. I have read a number of them. Bodansky's book is - unfortunately - among the worst ones, and I feel frightened to see how people rate it positively. Bodansky's book primarily consists of unproved allegations. It is easy for him to do that, since everything supposedly comes from "intelligence" sources which he cannot disclose, etc. But people with some knowledge of the topic soon realize that it is a mixture of accurate information and mere allegations. ... I would much more recommend Bergen's book, for instance - another early book on Bin Laden. Gunaratna's book is also significantly better, although it does not entirely escape criticism
  
  
• Hard to separate fact from conspiracy theory fiction
  By on 1999-07-17
  I waited a long time for this book to come out. But I was saddened to discover that it makes a number of statements that are very hard to credit.

  1. Iran and Bin Laden work together: Really? My readings tell me that Shi'a (Iran) and Sunni (Bin Laden) traditions tend to disdain each other (if not outright hate each other --Sunnis consider Shi'as heretics). Bin Laden's hosts, the Taliban are extreme Sunnis and the Iranians have almost gone to war with them over their treatment of Shi'as in Afghanistan. Therefore, I kinda sorta doubt that they'd be working together.

  2. TWA 800: Bodansky stubbornly clings to the view that TWA 800 was destroyed by Islamist terrorists. This is despite the conclusions by the NTSB and FBI that it was an accident. Bodansky implies that the terrorist attack was deliberately covered up. Why? Why would we do that and why would the terrorists not directly claim the attack?

  People interested in this topic should wait a little while longer for a more serious book to appear.
  
  

• Bin Laden - Terror or Truth?
  By A6KSCA9ZZ5QK8 on 2000-10-20
  Here is a little piece of the biography of this man that is not found in this book.

  During the oil boom of the Middle East during the 1970s, Mohammad bin Ladin, an ordinary from Yemen came and settled with his family in Saudi Arabia. He opened a business which later proved to be one of the biggest construction companies in the entire Middle East: the Bin Ladin Corporation. This company was involved in the construction of roads, buildings, mosques, airports and the entire infrastructure of many of the countries in the Arabian Gulf. Usama was one of the sons of Mohammad bin Ladin. Being an ordinary young man, he was more pious than his brothers, and was deeply affected by the involvement of his family's company in rebuilding the two Holy Mosques in Makkah and Madinah. Then in 1979, just after he graduated from King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah with a degree in Civil Engineering, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and the Mujahideen put out an international plea for help. Usama bin Ladin responded by packing himself and several of his family's bulldozers off to Afghanistan. He was inspired, he said, by the plight of Muslims in a medieval society besieged by a 20th century superpower. "In our religion, there is a special place in the Hereafter for those who participate in Jihad," he was quoted as saying. "One day in Afghanistan was like 1000 days of praying in an ordinary mosque." At first his work was political. He recruited thousands of Arab fighters in the Gulf, paid for their passage to Afghanistan and set up the main camps to train them. Later he designed defensive tunnels and ditches along the Pakistani border, driving a bulldozer and exposing himself to strafing from Soviet helicopter gunships. Before long, he had taken up a Kalashnikov and was going into battle. In 1986 he and a few dozen Arab defenders fought off a Soviet onslaught in town called Jaji, not far off from the Pakistani border. To the Arab volunteers, it was one of the first demonstrations that the Russians could actually be beaten. A year later, Bin Ladin led an offensive against Soviet troops in the battle of Shaban. Vicious handtohand fighting claimed heavy Mujahideen casualties, but his men succeeded in pushing the Soviets out of the area, with the Help of Allah (SWT).

  Who in this day and age can dare to stand up against American occupation of muslim land. The answer is not many, but when one man does, he is labeled as nothing other than an evil terrorist. Osama Bin Laden is not a terrorist, the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania are merely crimes alleged to him and to which he himself has refuted. Bin Laden is a man deeply loved and respected by muslim people all over and a hero to those that stand for justice. In contrast, he is hated and loathed but the Saudi regime and Americans alike. I hope that the mothers of this muslim nation bear one like him.
  
  

• Must Read For All Americans
  By A22TKVA6VCCWC7 on 2003-01-05
  Yossef Bodansky goes into exhaustive detail on the history of Osama bin Laden and how he became the man he is today. Bodansky explains the training, the financing, and the methodic steps it takes to pull off a terrorist attack. A process Bin Laden clearly has mastered. First written in 1999, shortly after the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were simultaneously blown up, and updated after the terrorists attacks of September 11th, Bin Laden The Man Who Declared War on America quickly educates us on the fundamental reason why Bin Laden has devoted his life to terrorizing Americans. 'Bin Laden is convinced that United States presence in the Muslim world, particularly in his home country of Saudi Arabia, prevents the establishment of real Islamic governments and the realization of the Islamic revivalism to which he and others aspire. Since a frontal assault is out of the question the United States must be terrorized into withdrawing from the Muslim world.' These reasons, along with the United States' unconditional support for Israel are the reasons behind every terrorist attack on Americans. Bodansky cannot state it any simpler.
  

  Through his years of research, and eight prior books on international terrorism, Bodansky is able to explain the complexities of the network bin Laden has established to carry out terrorist attacks like no other. Upon completion of the book you feel well informed on the man who has caused so much pain here in America. It is also an excellent book to refer back to as the present war on terrorism evolves.
  

  Bin Laden was quick to join the fight against the Soviet Union after their invasion of Afghanistan. Arabs who fought alongside him describe him as fearless. 'He was a hero to us because he was always on the front line, always moving ahead of everyone else, he not only gave his money, but also gave himself. He came down from his palace to live with the Afghan peasants, and Arab fighters. He cooked with them, ate with them, dug trenches with them. That was the bin Laden way.' Osama continues to use the respect and heroic status he achieved during the war against the Soviets, to establish a devoted and loyal following that he now uses to terrorize the U.S.
  

  Perhaps the most critical event, which enabled bin Laden to rise to the top, was the confrontation in Somalia between U.S. troops and a local Muslim warlord in 1993. The confrontation can now be watched on DVD in the movie Black Hawk Down. Bodansky does a remarkable job of explaining how bin Laden had a hand in the operation that would ultimately lead to the death of 18 soldiers and the eviction of U.S. troops from Somalia. Shortly after the U.S. announced plans to begin a humanitarian mission in Somalia, Bin Laden organized the movement of 3,000 trained Afghans along with heavy weapons, high explosives, and supplies from Yemen to Somalia. At a personal cost of $3 million, these troops were critical to the Islamists operational plan of destroying American forces. The death of the 18 soldiers, when a mission to capture the local warlord goes bad, brought shock to Washington and the rest of America who thought the mission of the U.S. military was strictly humanitarian. Shortly after the tragic events on October 3, 1993, U.S. troops were entirely pulled out of Somalia.
  

  While most Americans seem to have forgotten the events of that day, Islamists have not. In fact it was an enormous victory for them that would motivate future terrorists strikes with the goal of evicting U.S. presence in the Gulf. The achievement against the U.S. in Somalia convinced bin Laden that it would be possible to ultimately evict the U.S. from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states as well. Bin Laden still defines the fighting in Somalia as one of his major triumphs against the U.S. He states in the book, 'We also believe that our battle against America is much simpler than the war against the Soviet Union, because some of our Mujahideen who fought here in Afghanistan also participated in operations against the Americans in Somalia - and they were surprised at the collapse of American morale. This convinced us that Americans are a paper tiger.'
  

  Bodansky's discussions of present day terrorists strikes enable the reading to be fresh as it relates to America's current crisis. One is overcome with an eerie feeling when reading about a visit to the U.S. in 1995 by one of Bin Laden's top men, Ayman Al Zawahiri. His mission was to 'establish first hand the strength and reliability of local networks'and confirm the suitability of various objectives for spectacular strikes.' The events of September 11th were no doubt one of Bin Laden's planned 'spectacular strikes.' The eeriness continues when Zawahiri returned home to Europe 'convinced that the U.S. could become fertile ground for a series of spectacular terrorists operations'provided they were properly planned and professionally executed.' Just six years after his visit the World Trade Center no longer stands and nearly 3,000 U.S. citizens lost their lives in the world deadliest terrorist operation.
  

  Bodansky has written a book we all should study. The extensive research and information he has accumulated on Bin Laden over the past decade, makes this book perhaps the most detailed one in bookstores today. Bodansky provides incredible evidence of Bin Laden's attempts to obtain weapons of mass destruction by spending over $3 million in an effort to purchase a nuclear suitcase from the former Soviet Union. Bodansky also show the collaboration between Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein through his son Qusay Hussein. Such evidence is surly being studied by Washington. As the war on terrorism continues, we can all benefit in gaining a deeper understanding of our enemy. This book is an excellent beginning.
  
  

• LACKING VERIFICATION METHODS
  By A3DAOH9QT1O37Y on 2004-08-03
  If the story told here could be verified, then it would validate the methods behind our war on terror...yes, even the invasion of Iraq. While Mr. Bodansky, apparently a well-knowned counter-terrorism "expert", writes with thematic clarity, he fails in a major regard to verification. Although the book has a list of sources in the back, they are not cross-referenced to any of the material in the book. This leaves the reader with several choices. 1. Accept his premise entirely, 2. Accept parts of his premise (which parts are fact, which parts are fiction?), or 3. reject his premise entirely. What a conundrum. I can reject item 3 because I would have had to have been living on the moon for the last 20 years to escape the wealth of information negating that premise. I cannot accept premise 1 either due to the lack of a well thought out set of footnotes and references that could be checked for veracity. That leaves item 2 as the only choice available...hmmm...what to believe and what not to believe. Like I said, a conundrum.
  In the age of everyone writes a book and the "drive-by" work of literature, I hope that these authors will soon learn that some of us would like a detailed reference list so we can verify what is truth and what is only truth in their own reality.
  
  
• A must read
  By A2XJDZOB6MTIFP on 2000-06-29
  This book sums nicely what every Westerner should know about the world of Islamic terrorism and how it affects their nation, the politics of diplomacy, and even their own personal safety of themselves and their loved ones. As angry as I was reading about this monster, his murderous deeds, and his aims, I could not put the book down. It's a book you don't really want to read because the subject matter is very unsettling. But because the story of evil personified is always compelling, it's an irresistable page-turner.
  
  
• Decent read on face value
  By on 2001-09-27
  I've owned this book since it first was published in '99. The book reads well with the excepetion of a few boring parts. For the most part, Bodansky gives the straight facts about bin Laden and definately covers his history in depth. My only real complaint is the anti-bin Laden spin Bodansky puts on his writing. Some chapters seemed to carry a little too much of his personal agenda with them. Bottom line: take this book on its face value and ignore the [personal] input.
  
  
  
• An Interesting Crock, but a Crock Nonetheless
  By on 2002-06-27
  An exhaustive look at the author's biased worldview in which Iran lurks behind every Islamic terror organization, regardless of their orientation. The author's obvious pro-Israel anti-Iran bias and total lack of documentation for fantastic claims of insider knowledge undermine the essence of the information contained in the book. Reading it, one wonders how an outsider, a Jew and a representative of the US government can get detailed accounts of insider meetings of terrorist organizations. We're told to trust him, he has to protect the sources. Sorry, but without documentation, there is no factual basis to judge this book on. His bizzare theories with regard to TWA 800 are offered with little understanding of explosive physics and no documentation whatsoever.

  Any valid information in the book is undermined by flawed and undocumented claims elsewhere. There are far better researched and documented books on Bin Ladin available.
  
  

• Difficult, but rewarding, read
  By on 2001-11-06
  I found this book rewarding and tough going at the same time. On the one hand, it is packed with painstaking factual details about various intelligence agencies, front groups, terrorist groups and political figures that Bin Laden comes in contact with over time. Fortunately, there is an index of significant abbreviations and organizations which is helpful but this book is still a "difficult read." One disappointment: I never got a sense of the big picture. What is the strategy and agenda of Bin Laden and his fundamentalist allies? What motivates them? What is their overall,longterm plan as we head into this new century? I felt the book was always focused on particular "trees" and did not focus on the proverbial "forest" and the man's vision for this movement he supposedly now leads. I would suggest one other book that I think provides this missing piece: Anthony J. Dennis wrote a book called "The Rise of the Islamic Empire and
  the Threat to the West" which contains a lot of predictions and unique insights that in retrospect are absolutely prophetic (I re-read the book after 9/11/01). He focuses on the game plan for territorial conquest of the international fundamentalist movement in a way that Bodansky does not. So, both Dennis's and Bodansky's books are a must to get the complete picture.
  
  
• A turkey by any other name
  By AQZROUIY6VZGC on 2002-01-20
  Don't waste your time on this book, please. If you're looking for a biography of Osama Bin-Laden this isn't it. If you happen to be looking for an account of the rise of a global Islamic terrorist network this is closer to the mark. Unfortunately, as accounts go it's neither trustworthy nor readable.

  The author devotes hundreds of pages to describing conferences of terrorist leaders: their names, where the conferences were held, what was discussed, and what decisions were made. Fine and good, but the detail is mind-numbing and the prose lifeless. September 11th turned this dull, marginal work into an overnight bestseller.

  But dullness isn't the only problem. You can't trust anything you read here. There are no footnotes. The author attempts to explain this in the beginning by stressing the need to maintain secrecy in order to protect his sources. That might explain the exclusion of some footnotes, but there is no excuse to exclude all footnotes in a work of this nature.

  Whatever the true explanation for the sloppy documentation, the author has a political axe to grind and ommitting footnotes certainly makes the grinding easier by keeping readers from anything that might lead them to other conclusions. Bodansky makes several outlandish assertions in the course of the book. Perhaps the most outlandish holds that the Clinton administration made a backroom deal with Islamic extremists on the Bosnian conflict: the United States would allow the extremists to overthrow the Mubarak regime in Egypt as long as they did not attack U.S. forces in Bosnia.

  It may not be coincidental that Bodansky works for a committee dominated by congressional republicans who devoted considerable resources and time to getting President Clinton impeached in 1999. Representative Tom De Lay is one of his biggest fans. If you're a congressional republican you might be able to read the whole book without falling asleep.
  
  

• The Secret History of the Iraq War
• The New Jackals: Famzi, Yousef, Osama bin Laden, and the Future of Terrorism
• Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
• American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us
• Terrorism and Homeland Security: An Introduction