Free Republic

When Osama bin Laden was banished from Sudan in 1996, he left the country in a rented Soviet jet — an aged and antique Tupolev flown by a Russian pilot he did not trust. With him were a few bodyguards, his military commander, Saif al-Adel, and two sons named Sa’ad and Omar — both young men in their late teens. Although it was the corrupt Islamic government of Sudan that had robbed Osama bin Laden of much of his vast personal wealth, he blamed America for his misfortunes, according to Pulitzer Prize-winner Lawrence Wright. “He held America responsible for the...

Al-Qaida is at war. And not just against the West, but with itself, says Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower, the definitive account of the terrorist organization and the road leading up to the attacks of Sept. 11. "It's very profound in the radical edge of it," says Wright, who explores the ideological rift for an article in next week's New Yorker magazine. "Before, moderate Muslims have spoken out against violence in the name of Islam, but now radicals are doing the same thing. And what's fascinating is that they're attacking on two grounds: One is that [violence is]...

On Tuesday I interviewed journalist and author Lawrence Wright, long a contributor to The New Yorker. Wright’s The Looming Tower won the Pulitzer for general non-fiction last week, and its chilling account of the rise of al Qaeda awakens any objective reader to the facts that this worldwide Islamist threat is not the creation of the Bush presidency, and more than retreat from Iraq would stall its growth or limit its appeal. There is no alternative to fighting it wherever it appears, just as there is no alternative to cabining Iran’s ambitions. (The transcript of Tuesday’s interview with Wright is...

The question on every American's lips on Sept. 11, 2001 was "why?" Lawrence Wright's new book, "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11" answers it better than just about anything written so far. In what's destined to be one of the definitive early histories of the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks, Wright starts at what he says is the beginning of modern Islamic fundamentalism: the curious case of an Egyptian named Sayyid Qutb. Living in the U.S. in the late 1940s and '50s (including a stint in Greeley, of all places), the middle-aged Qutb formed an...

Preview and analysis for Weekend Talk Shows, 9-30 and 10-1-06 It's week four (or 297, depending on how you figure it) of the WOB (war on Bush) and all things "Republi-fascist," as the drive by media might style what they're doing.  We've had a week of spin like we haven't seen since... well, since Clinton was in office.  All the old hateful and hate filled faces were back on the screaming head shows pulling their electrically powered rapid fire mouths back out of storage and plugging them in for one more go around of lies, screaming lies and videotape.  And...

The Looming Tower author, Lawrence Wright The Hugh Hewitt Show 9-22-06 at 6:02 PM HH: If you’re driving, you’ll want to pull over. If you’re in your house, you’ll want to sit down. For the next two hours, I’m going to talk with Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda And The Road To 9/11, about the nature of al Qaeda, where it came from, where it is going, what it did on 9/11, and what it did before and since. It’s a conversation you really don’t want to miss. The Looming Tower is now on best seller...