My last post went awry. I set out to share my thoughts after reading The Looming Tower, but I somehow wound up just smacking dubya around again. It's becoming a reflex action for me. I shall endeavor to remain on course this time, however I guarantee nothing. A little more of Lawrence Wright's well-researched history of al-Qaeda:

From the beginning of al-Qaeda, there were reformers and there were nihilists. The dynamic between them was irreconcilable and self-destructive, but events were moving so quickly that it was almost impossible to tell the philosophers from the sociopaths. They were glued together by the charismatic personality of Osama bin Laden, which contained both strands, idealism and nihilism, in a potent mix.

The fact that he was a millionaire willing to finance terrorism and pay a monthly stipend to every wild-eyed religious zealot in his personal army strengthened his charisma a great deal. But bin Laden's followers weren't all nut jobs. Wright gives us a glimpse into the mindset of the hundreds of disaffected young men from all over the world who turned to jihad:

Most who joined the jihad did so in a country other than the one in which they were reared. They were Algerians living in expatriate enclaves in France, Moroccans in Spain, or Yemenis in Saudi Arabia. Despite their accomplishments, they had little standing in the host societies where they lived...., they defined themselves as radical Muslims while living in the West. The Pakistani in London found that he was neither authentically British nor authentically Pakistani; and this feeling of marginality was just as true for Lebanese in Kuwait as it was for Egyptians in Brooklyn. Alone, alienated, and often far from his family, the exile turned to the mosque, where he found companionship and the consolation of religion. Islam provided the element of commonality. It was more than a faith—it was an identity.

The imams naturally responded to the alienation and anger that prompted these men to find a spiritual home. A disproportionate number of new mosques in immigrant communities had been financed by Saudi Arabia and staffed by Wahhabi fundamentalists, many of whom were preaching the glories of jihad

Both the money and the mentality behind much of today's terrorism comes from Saudi Arabia, a country our preznit considers an ally in the War on Terra. We preach democracy while openly supporting a monarchy that keeps most of it's population poor and the royal family among the wealthiest in the world. The Saudi government holds on to power and maintains peace within the country through tacit support of fundamentalism and terrorism abroad. We ignore this because maintaining the illusion keeps the oil flowing smoothly.

The latter part of the book details how bureaucracy, massive ego and personality conflicts led to the deliberate misinterpretation of information-sharing policy between our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and subsequently to our failure to prevent 9/11.

The most egregious incidents of withholding vital information were committed by the CIA under Director George Tenet, who worked for the both the Clenis and dubya. It's curious that dubya kept Tenet on as Director of the CIA, since he came into office determined to do exactly the opposite of everything the Clenis did (he was the anti-Clenis), but I guess he knows a sycophant when he sees one. Tenet stayed, and terrorism, which was already on the back burner under the Clenis, was taken off the stove by the new administration.

In my book, if any single person could have prevented 9/11, that person would be George Tenet. He was in a position to both ease the sharing of CIA intelligence with other government agencies, and to impress upon two different presidents the seriousness of the threat from radical Islam and terrorism. He did nothing, the towers came down, and the war preznit pinned a medal on his chest. Hmmph.