Jean-Charles Brisard & Guillanme Dasquié. Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for bin Laden. 2002.

Required reading for all Americans of voting age

1. You're either with Bush or you're with the terrorists, who are evil and therefore naturally hate freedom. Terrorists, like all things evil, come out of noplace in particular for no reason. They drop out of the sky onto buildings or emerge from the depths of right wing misogynistic fundamentalist nonChristianity. We can't be exected to fully understand the workings of evil.

Well? Do you agree?

2. FBI had intelligence that terrorists were planning to commit the crimes of September 11th but such foreknowledge was suppressed through at best incompetence and at worst economic motives that lead ultimately to Middle Eastern and Asian oil. Osama bin Laden got his start as a CIA asset and the bin Laden and Bush families have financial ties. So elements connected to our government planned and executed the attack of September 11th.

Well?

If you aren't satisfied with either the haughty ignorace of 1. or the paranoia of 2. (but notice that 2 tries harder to draw on the available facts), then this book, written by two French terrorism experts, may help give you some vital background on the War on Terror. It does go into a great deal of detail about banking and Islam, making it not effortless to follow. Nobody emerges from this ruthless analysis as a sympathetic character, least of all Osama bin Laden.

But the authors had the audacity to subtitle their book “The Failed Hunt for bin Laden” although it was published after the War on Terror had moved into Afganistan and, as of the writing of this review (September 2002), the subtitle is still accurate.

In November 2005 I read the book again, and the audacious subtitle was still accurate. This time I was struck by the fact that French terrorism experts write more stylish prose than American terrorism experts. But I still nodded off during the chapter that explains Osama bin Laden's financial ties.