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Another mistaken 'conceptzia'
by Laurie Mylroie
Al-Qaida has struck again, or so it seems. "A virtual enemy," as a Clinton administration official describes it, al-Qaida is everywhere and anywhere. It is no less a threat than it was a year ago, according to CIA director George Tenet although the Taliban are defeated; al-Qaida's leadership is dead or on the run; and more than 3,000 others have been detained. "You see it in Bali. You see it in Kuwait," Tenet affirmed. And now, presumably, we saw it in Mombasa. |
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"Study of Revenge," the sequel to the New York Times best-seller "Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf," co-authored by Laurie Mylroie and Judith Miller, exposes the threat Saddam Hussein still poses to Americans. The Gulf War never ended for Saddam Hussein. He had already recovered sufficiently by 1993 to undertake a campaign of terror, of which only the first two acts were planned in advance: the January shootings outside CIA headquarters in Virginia and the February bombing of one tower of the World Trade Center in New York, in an attempt to topple it against its twin. "Study of Revenge" is, first of all, the story of the Trade Center bombing. Mylroie contends that the mastermind behind the bombing was an Iraqi intelligence agent, Ramzi Yousef, who escaped and left behind the Muslim fundamentalists who participated in the plot and were meant to be caught. She argues that the Clinton administration's mishandling of the event led to the emergence of a fraudulent and dangerous theory about Middle East terrorism--that it is no longer primarily state-sponsored but is carried out by individuals or "loose networks." The misunderstanding is particularly dangerous in light of the prospects for biological terrorism. In addition to her account of events around the bombing, Mylroie describes how Saddam Hussein has steadily regained strength and eroded the system of postwar constraints that were supposed to hold him in check. She suggests that because of the proscribed unconventional-weapons capabilities Saddam retained in violation of the Gulf War cease-fire--and without the check of U.N. weapons inspectors--he is far more dangerous than is generally recognized. Mylroie bases her case on a meticulous analysis of the government's evidence in the terrorism trials that followed the Trade Center bombing. Her book is written as a detective story, and the reader is invited to conduct the investigation into state sponsorship of the terrorism that the U.S. government failed to conduct. |
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 Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense The destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon -- all within one hour on September 11, 2001 -- demonstrated America's shocking vulnerability to terrorism. Yet terror had already emerged on America's shores eight years earlier, when the mysterious terrorist mastermind, Ramzi Yousef (arrested after a botched attempt to down a dozen U.S. airlines) bombed the World Trade Center in an attempt to fell the buildings. His attacks were viewed as the harbinger of a new terrorism, carried out by an elusive enemy driven by religious fanaticism to unprecedented hatred of the United States. But is that perception accurate? A real-life detective story, The War Against America engages the reader in a gripping examination of the evidence regarding Yousef and his terrorism. It reveals the split between New York and Washington that emerged during the investigation and tells a terrifying tale of America left exposed and vulnerable following the mishandling of what was once the most ambitious terrorist attack ever attempted on U.S. soil.
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