The Looming Tower
 

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This thread is for discussion of Lawrence Wright's new book, The Looming Tower. If you want to support Lawtalkers when you pick up your copy, go to the home page and click through the link on the top left to go to Amazon.

I will edit this page to provide links to stuff about the book (e.g., reviews). Suggestions in that regard are welcome.

Since different people will read the book at different speeds, jump right in here when you have something to say.

Reviews
Ronnie Crocker, The Houston Chronicle
Spencer Ackerman, The Austin American-Statesman
Charles Taylor, The New York Observer

Other Stuff of Possible Interest
a conversation between Lawrence Wright and Steve Coll at Slate

The Looming Tower
 

You need a snappier thread title to attract posters. May I suggest something involving penske?

The Looming Tower
 

While we are on the subject of reading materials, I am not sure whether I have recommended this before, but this is worth reading too:



http://images.barnesandnoble.com/ima...0/10606546.gif

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/boo...12971897&itm=1

The Looming Tower
 

right on, unless he was trying to kill the board.

Anyhoo, I am going to buy my copy today. I am on vacay Thursday through Tuesday, so assuming I don't work too much, I will try to read it then. Please don't post the ending, I wanted to be surprised.

The Looming Tower
 

I'm to Chapter 2, about the childhood and rise of Ayman Al-Zawahiri (but you can just call him Al). Just wondering how one plays golf on an 18 hole course (Maadi Sporting Club) that is 100% sand. Isn't the whole thing one big sand trap? On that note, I am deeply disturbed that one must "blast" explosively to get out of the sand trap and...that the technical name for a sand trap is a "bunker."

Carry on.

Interview with the author
 

On NPR's All Things Considered this afternoon. I just finished the novel I've been working on (I liked a lot), so I'll start this later on this evening.

Interview with the author
 

I'm still concurrently reading Fforde's "The Fourth Bear", so I am only up to Chapter 3

Interview with the author
 

I'm a book behind you on the Fforde series, but I did pick it and the Fourth Bear when I bought the "Looming Tower."

I'm also reading Jeff Galloway's "Half Marathon: You Can Do It," but I doubt anyone else would have interest in that.

Interview with the author
 

I bought the Looming Tower through the Amazon link on this board. I buy from Amazon a lot so the link took me straight to the sign on page instead of to the book. I have a feeling, because of my having an Amazon password etc. that the board may not have gotten credit. You may want to check.

Interview with the author
 

So long as you start your Amazon adventures from the page that you click on from here, we should get the credit.

I read the first chapter last night, and I had all sorts of weird dreams about the Displaced Dog hunting for al Qaeda in my shorts drawer.

The Looming Tower
 

My sister used to live in Maadi and belonged to that club. I'll ask her your question. Curious.

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OK, I'm done reading it.

My initial response:

1. I hate the CIA.
2. OBL isn't some great super terrorist mastermind. He's just a figurehead and a rallying point for recruitment.
3. I'm a Dem who voted for him twice, but I gotta say Clinton dropped the ball in regard to his response after the embassy bombings (cruise missile attacks) and after the attack on the Cole (no response at all).
4. The book was a very good read.

Interview with the author
 

Galloway is a fucking hack.

The Looming Tower
 

I'm done reading it, too. I was waiting for more people before I said much of anything, but I will say that I thought the book was much, much better at telling the bin Laden/Zawahiri side of the story than the O'Neill/Turki side of the story. Wright obviously didn't have any access to what anyone else at the FBI was doing, and he doesn't seem to have had any access at all to the CIA. Michael Schereur (sp?) makes a brief cameo -- in reality, he was running the CIA's Al Qaeda effort, and has written his own book about it (haven't read it). Wright had even less access to Saudi intelligence's doings.

Not to criticize Wright for a book he didn't write, but it's more like a history of Al Qaeda up to 2001 than what the book jackets sells it as.

Anyone reading this book should know that this week's New Yorker -- the Sept. 11 issue -- has an article by Lawrence Wright in it about Al Qaeda in the last five years. Definitely worth reading if you're reading the book, and even if you're not (although I'm only part-way through it).

If you can't get a copy, PM me, and I'll find a way to scan it or something.

eta: Alas, it's not on their web site.

Please pdf it to me. :D

The Looming Tower
 

I could have told you this before reading page 1.


eta: actually i posted it multiple times under 49 socks over the last 6 years.

The Looming Tower
 

You're right. I didn't take into account that his lack of access to the CIA could manifest itself as "WTF was the CIA thinking?" in the book.

I also learned a lot about how al Queda was formed and was fascinated by the more personal stories about OBL and Zawahiri. I wish there was more info about the 9/11 hijackers. I feel like more insight into why so many upper/middle class Saudis choose jihad over a confortable lifestyle.

As a westerner, I have some difficulty keeping all the middle eastern names straight (every one seems to be named Abu Abudullah al-Whatever, NTTAWWT), especially since everyone has at least two aliases. Reading Bob Baer's books is a real chore in this regard. But I thought Wright did a nice job making it easy to identify the players, which is no easy feat.

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Everyone remembers the cruise missiles, but I was stunned to discover that we did nothing after the Cole attack. Maybe I was aware of this and just blocked it out because it's too awful to contemplate that we did nothing in response.

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Just to be clear, the lack of response was not because he was distracted by any of the fall out from the exercise of poor judgment in other areas of his work life.

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So he says. But the bottom line is it's silly to deflect blame onto the Rs because they distracted him from his job by impeaching him. Clinton is the one who gave them the excuse to impeach.
Was he such a politial neophyte that he believed that if he lied under oath the Rs wouldn't want to crucify him for it? The blame rests with him.

I also saw something suggesting he didn't want to appear as if he was blatantly helping Gore by starting a military operation in the fall of 2000.

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I was previously something of a fencesitting neutral on this issue, but I see your point, and I agree, the blame does lie with Clinton.

Well played, playa.

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lol (really, I did). But just so you don't get the wrong idea, I'd take either Clinton in a second over Bush. It's better you know this up front so you don't get hurt later on.

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Fair enough, although since W can't run again, its not really that big of a deal.

Feel free to email me that PDF, since its unlikely I'll be picking up a New Yorker anytime soon.

I'm a bit behind on the book - Chapter 4 - but I should have some time this weekend to read more

The Looming Tower
 

Just to be clear, since Penske is incorrectly implying that the fault for this is Clinton's, the 9/11 Commission found that we didn't have evidence that bin Laden was responsible for the Cole bombing until after Clinton left office. The Cole was bombed on October 12, 2000. We developed indications that Al Qaeda was involved within weeks, but they were judged insufficient to justify war with Afghanistan:

• [T]he Yemenis provided strong evidence connecting the Cole attack to al Qaeda during the second half of November, identifying individual operatives whom the United States knew were part of al Qaeda. During December the United States was able to corroborate this evidence. But the United States did not have evidence about Bin Ladin’s personal involvement in the attacks until Nashiri and Khallad were captured in 2002 and 2003. (193)

See pp 193-98 of the Report. It's available for free on-line.

Richard Clarke developed a plan to go after the Taliban short of outright war, and presented it to his new bosses after Bush was inaugurated in January. As we all know, Condi Rice tabled it.

So the fact that we didn't do shit is a reflection of the fact that the Bush crowd had other priorities, and that Clinton was no longer in office.

Not within the purview of the book, really, but there you go.

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Res ipsa, we knew who did it, and we had enough on him to justify going after him. Clinton dropped the ball and Clarke is a partisan of the ideology of Clarke, highly enamoured of his own after the fact know it allism.

Ty, why can't you be fair and admit Clinton dropped the ball? It is this partisan intransigence in the face of what we know is the truth that is why Spanky won't classify you a moderate.

The Looming Tower
 

If Clinton dropped the ball, then Bush did too. The Cole was attacked only shortly before Bush was elected. Are you suggesting that Clinton should have declared war on Afghanistan? The 9/11 Commission Report explains that Clinton did not get the "res ipsa" evidence you -- in hindsight -- say he had and he thought he needed. But if he should have invaded Afghanistan in December, 2000, then why didn't Bush do it in January?

Query to the Better Read
 

Say if you were starting up a country, what guidelines and sanctions would you create for advance fee fraud, check/money order scamming and fake banks?


Did you mean for this post to be on this board? -- T.S.

The Looming Tower
 

it was the 6th or 7th major hit during his adminstration. Pattern?

On the Cole, at first I thought the argument that it would be wrong to start an action at the end of a term made sense, and maybe it does in theory, but doesn't that argument leave up open to attack at the end of every lame duck term?

Lawrence Wright did this chat on washingtonpost.com today.

Lawrence Wright's recent article in The New Yorker about Al Qaeda since 9/11 is now available on-line.

Still lagging
 

about 2/3s through...

Still lagging
 

I just started Chapter 17. I think I have about 100 pages to go.

Still lagging
 

Finished on Friday evening, assessment is pretty much the same as soup sandwich's.