November 5, 2002
Awakened Woman's Circle is working for peace
Order The New Freedom from Powell's Independent Bookstore
Why were we attacked?
Some disturbing answers
by Bronley Heintz
Book Review on The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, Sept.11th,2001 by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Why were our intelligence agencies not aware of a plot to hi-jack passenger planes and fly them into American buildings, in the days immediately before 9/11, but they were able to state definitively who the hi-jackers were, and knew everything about their affiliations, within 24hours of the trade tower bombings?
How could the Bush administration have been so confident about the perpetrators of this crime, that they were willing to send, immediately after, the entire military might of th.e U.S., to invade another sovereign nation, and yet not one shred of convincing, untampered evidence has ever been presented that ties these 9/11 suicide bombers to Osama Bin Lauden, the presumed mastermind, let alone any ties linking them to the hapless people of Afghanistan.
An incredible crime was committed on 9/11. Who perpetrated this crime, and why, has never been adequately explained to the American people. The explanations we have been given are at odds with the facts which have been presented in our most reputable news sources. The arrests and interrogations have all been done in secret. Not a single suspect has been charged, let alone tried, except Zacarius Moussaoui, a French citizen, who wishes to address the American people, to let them know who else was involved. He is willing to plead guilty, in order to get a chance to do this, but our government will not allow him to speak for himself. In a motion submitted by him before last July, he states that the U.S. government watched the 19 hijackers before Sept.11, and facilitated their movements in and out of the country (Santa Rosa Press Democrat July2, 2002). I doubt we will be hearing anything more from him for a long, long time. Others, who are not fortunate enough to be French citizens, have been simply "disappeared" with no notification to their families, or recourse to due process of law.
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, a young British citizen and family man, a brilliant political scientist and human rights activist, serves as Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development in Brighton, UK. His very compelling book, The War on Freedom, brings us the story of the trade tower bombings, as it is gleaned from the many major news sources, both here and abroad, and presents, in a quite lucid and readable way, a picture very different from what our major media would have us believe. For explanations of the U.S. policies and involvements that have set the stage here, he goes to the government sources themselves, and in matters of defense, he quotes the Pentagon's own websites. Every statement in this book is extensively and assiduously footnoted.
Of all the evidence of U.S. complicitness in the trade tower bombing presented in this book, I think the most condemning was the lack of meaningful response, on the part of our armed services, at the actual moment of the attack. Whenever an aircraft deviates from its flight plan, and fails to respond to attempts at contact from the flight tower, it is automatically presumed to be hijacked. This triggers a routine response, known as Standard Operating Procedure, which includes an immediate scrambling of F-15 fighter jets to get U.S. Air Force pilots in the air, to make close visual contact with the presumed hi-jacker. According to every parameter, this interception should have occurred within 10 minutes of the first indication that something was amiss, which would have had our fighter jets accompanying the first two hijacked planes well before they crashed into the trade towers. If this Standard Operating Procedure had been followed, and if our president could have torn himself away from reading to school-children to tend to this national emergency, there would have been many more options for response. Instead, no fighter jets arrived on the scene until after the Pentagon was struck, (1 hour and 51 minutes after the first notification that a hijacking had occurred).
The author also points out how those who may well have been complicit in this crime not only have every reason to cover it up, but they also have been handed the means to do so when our legislature passed the "Patriot Act". For anyone who has had an uneasy feeling about the course on which our country has embarked, with Bush and Cheney at the helm, this book is a must.
However, I do not recommend that anyone read the chapter on domestic surveillance. If we, as individuals, succumb to the terror which has been so insidiously created and directed by this administration, and we allow that terror to cause us to monitor and suppress our own statements and public exposure, then we will be making it far too easy for those implicated in the 9/11 destruction to maintain a blanket of silence to cover their criminal deeds. Rather, let us allow the truth to flourish.
This book is raising the questions that must be answered. Buy two copies, and share with a friend. We can still win the war for freedom, but only if we act soon and decisively, to hold onto the rights and freedoms that we had assumed, until now, we would always have.
This book was reviewed by Bronley Heintz, currently a nurse at Memorial Hospital. She travelled in Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan in 1970-71.