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11. September

A Review as Statement

Subject: The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001

by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

Reviewer: Arno Tausch, Innsbruck University

 

 I was originally quite impressed by the provisional word text file version of the study by colleague Dr. Ahmed from Britain on the tragedy of September 11. My own first positive electronic comment on the first version of the text, sent to me by Peter Spengler in Frankfurt, a joint friend of Professor Andre Gunder Frank and me - is now on the book cover of that book (in company with several other, well-known academic authors and the democratic representative for Georgia, Congresswoman Mrs. Cynthia Mc Kinney).

 Dr. Ahmed's website article (reprint of Chapter Five of the book) on the flight security aspects of September 11 is still indeed what I say on the cover text - powerful, disturbing, interesting, especially the first part of it.

 I cannot escape the impression, that in the printed final version of the book which I never saw before it went in print (with my name on the cover) - there is now really too much in terms of conspiracy theories and what have you, and too little in terms of serious intelligence policy research, too much news based on some websites, and too little hints of evidence, based on the serious world press.

 I now have to say, that I withdraw my positive assessment, printed on the book cover, for all future editions.

 The most glaring weakness is the contradiction now present in the book in the treatment of Israel. In the original draft which I could read, many western security agencies - including the Mossad - are positively mentioned (the Israeli one three times) -and I think correctly - as warning against the impending catastrophe.

 In the world systems network at Colorado University, I have gone on record by providing world scholarship with interesting internet links to items published in the Guardian, Al Ahram, the Kashmir Sentinel, and Pravda which give an interesting background on the foreign policy errors by successful US administrations in the region since the times of the Afghan wars in the 1980s.

 Future Congressional investigations will - I hope - ask present and past decision makers in Washington about phenomena like these - the Pakistani ISI under Lt. General Hamid GUL, the institution that "created" these "freedom" fighters with "God on their side" (Z. Brzezinski)in the first place:  

 http://www.atimes.com/ind-pak/CL13Df01.html

http://www.zeit.de/2001/40/Politik/200140_isi.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,583222,0 0.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,561634,0 0.html

 Mr. Nafeez M. Ahmed has given a dramatic turn in the published version - what looked in the draft as a serious account of the intelligence failure of September 11 has now become in the final printed version as THE great Israeli conspiracy.

 I trust that other people figuring on the cover - Congresswoman McKinney, and Professors McMurty and Peter Dale Scott - do share my apprehensions against the construction of such conspiracy theories.

 Why should the Mossad have warned against the threat (pages 114 etc. of the printed book; and on 3 pages in the draft) when in the end they are described in the later 1/3 of the book as the real culprits? So they warned against a crime which they were about to perpetrate? This is absurd, really absurd! And what about the hundreds of Jewish victims of September 11?

 I would be grateful if other sources also could seriously review the book: THE WAR ON FREEDOM, by Nafeez Mossaddeq Ahmed, and that they also dwell on the strengths and weaknesses of his kind of analysis. I have decided to go public with that debate; and I have a good international academic and also a former diplomatic name to defend.

 Having written only 60 % of his final text, colleague Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed would have prepared the groundwork for a good scholarly book, that could have been used by a serious investigation at the US Congress and other bodies. Instead of portraying his output as facts, he should have formulated, say, 60 or 80 questions to decision makers. A good title and subtitle would be: The Intelligence Failure of September 11 - questions on why ... etc.

 Now he has ruined the logic of his arguments completely, and has sided with easy and false conspiracy theories, has given arguments to anti-semites and other people, with whom I do not want to have anything to do, and I think, the other scholars and Congresswoman McKinney, all mentioned on the book cover as well, also do not want to have anything to do.

 I should also stress that this statement should not preclude a serious academic and moral debate about human rights violations in the Occupied Territories and suicide terrorism against Jewish targets in Israel, let alone the US-bombing of innocent civilians by depleted uranium etc. in the wake of September 11 in Afghanistan.

  

Dr. Arno TAUSCH, Associate Visiting Professor of Political Science, Innsbruck University