Rating: 
Summary: Much info about terrorist blurred by poor writing
Review: Before September 11, I only vaguely knew who Osama bin Laden was. My primary knowledge was that he was supposedly the mastermind of the embassy bombings in eastern Africa in 1998. After the attacks, I had an opportunity to get some books on the mid-east and bin Laden cheap, and I picked this book among others, in an attempt to educate myself. This was the first of those books that I read; I regret that now. While there's much good information here, I fear it will be mostly inaccessible to all but the most tenacious reader, because it's buried in a mass of very dense prose, and almost unreadable.One major difficulty is that the author knows almost nothing about bin Laden, and apparently chooses to tell you less. He only mentions his fourth wife, for instance (nothing whatsoever about the other three) and doesn't even apparently know her name. Bin Laden's birthday is apparently a mystery, and there is almost no personal information about him that would qualify this as a true biography in any sense of the word. As a result, all the reader is given is a synopsis of bin Laden's activities in the last decade or so, and of his political philosophy. Since bin Laden is a skilled terrorist mastermind, the author knows little for certain of his activities, and much of the book winds up being speculation. Where it isn't, there's the issue of unnamed sources, obviously necessary in intelligence operations, but annoying at best to anyone else trying to check on something the least bit controversial in the book itself. For instance, the author states firmly that bin Laden and al-Quaeda were directly involved (had people there shooting rifles) in the attack on U.S. troops in Somalia in 1993 that is depicted in the movie Blackhawk Down. I have read elsewhere that this is by no means a consensus opinion in American intelligence circles, but the author acknowledges no dissenting viewpoint, merely stating the facts as he sees them. The political philosophy portions of the book are exceptionally boring. Page after page of seemingly interminable threats, religious decrees, utterances by bin Laden himself, and communiqués, are dissected in detail. Unfortunately, often several of these, placed back to back in the text, say largely the same thing. Each one is gone over in excruciating detail, with the author telling you what he thinks everything means. One further detail: the book was completed in 1999, and hasn't been updated. There's no information whatsoever on the attack on the U.S.S. Cole (which took place in 2000) or obviously on the September 11 attacks. The author does make the case that bin Laden and his followers are going to try a serious attack on America (he believes that they will try weapons of mass destruction) and I suppose that September 11 qualifies. On this basis anyway, I think I can say the author makes a better prophet than he does a writer.
Rating: 
Summary: I should have known better.....
Review: Against my better judgement I picked up a copy of this book. I knew Mr. Bodansky twenty years ago when we were both new in Washington. At the time I was doing research and work on terrorism and he would often appear at the Johns Hopkins branch campus where I was based. Even then he would offer incredibly wild claims and assertions, usually completely out of line with anything anyone else was presenting. His perspective in those days was profoundly anti-arab and his ability to perceive massive conspiracies and world-wide plots that no one else saw was nothing short of amazing. As he does in this book, when challenged on many of his claims he would take refuge in the old dodge "I can't reveal my sources because of secrecy." He still relies on this evasion. Nonetheless, in trying to catch up on recent literature in the field, I obtained a copy of this book. Things clearly haven't changed much in twenty years except that he's managed to gain some degree of credibility by briefly working for a Congressman or two and then milking the connection for all it's worth. As other reviewers have observed, Mr. Bodansky fails to provide corroboration for many of his claims, especially the most outrageous ones, and inserts his own opinions and speculation without making it clear to the reader where he is doing so. The book is poorly written, often piling up page after page of uncorroborated and often incredible information without much attempt at serious analysis or explanation. In the end, one might wonder whether anything he's written here is very accurate. There's certainly no way to tell from the book itself, and so much of it is completely at variance with all other sources on the subject that one can only guess. Moreover, the fact that when he wrote the book he was working for people who were deeply anti-Clinton might lead one to suspect that perhaps his charges about the Clinton administration have more to do with a domestic partisan agenda than reality. Certainly, there is nothing to support some of the more outrageous allegations he makes about the Clinton administration, though given the amount of time, money and effort spent digging into Clinton's actions one would think if these things had actually happened, someone besides Mr. Bodansky would have reported it. So as I say, I should have known better. I know of no credible expert on the subject of terrorism who took Mr. Bodansky's efforts seriously twenty years ago, and there is nothing in this book that would make me take him any more seriously today. There are so many better works on Osama bin Laden (try Peter Bergen's excellent book for a start) and on terrorism. No one should waste their time with anything as simplistic, poorly presented, and of questionable veracity as this.
Rating:
Summary: A fiction book
Review: I was astonished by the quantity of the information in this book that doesn't contain any sources or evidence. The only thing mentioned about sources is a few pages in the beginning saying that the writer got the information from many sources but due to secrecy, he can't reveal them. By going through half of the book, I stopped reading it. So many claims, NOT one source or evidence. This book's place is under fiction category.
Rating:
Summary: A turkey by any other name
Review: Don't waste your time on this book, please. If you're looking for a biography of Osama Bin-Laden this isn't it. If you happen to be looking for an account of the rise of a global Islamic terrorist network this is closer to the mark. Unfortunately, as accounts go it's neither trustworthy nor readable. The author devotes hundreds of pages to describing conferences of terrorist leaders: their names, where the conferences were held, what was discussed, and what decisions were made. Fine and good, but the detail is mind-numbing and the prose lifeless. September 11th turned this dull, marginal work into an overnight bestseller. But dullness isn't the only problem. You can't trust anything you read here. There are no footnotes. The author attempts to explain this in the beginning by stressing the need to maintain secrecy in order to protect his sources. That might explain the exclusion of some footnotes, but there is no excuse to exclude all footnotes in a work of this nature. Whatever the true explanation for the sloppy documentation, the author has a political axe to grind and ommitting footnotes certainly makes the grinding easier by keeping readers from anything that might lead them to other conclusions. Bodansky makes several outlandish assertions in the course of the book. Perhaps the most outlandish holds that the Clinton administration made a backroom deal with Islamic extremists on the Bosnian conflict: the United States would allow the extremists to overthrow the Mubarak regime in Egypt as long as they did not attack U.S. forces in Bosnia. It may not be coincidental that Bodansky works for a committee dominated by congressional republicans who devoted considerable resources and time to getting President Clinton impeached in 1999. Representative Tom De Lay is one of his biggest fans. If you're a congressional republican you might be able to read the whole book without falling asleep.
Rating: 
Summary: Prophetic Account of a Chilling Subject
Review: As might be imagined, "Bid Laden, The Man Who Declared War on America" is an alarming book. And the fact that it was written two years before 9/11/01 makes it more so, since the narrative puts the events of that day into the context of an unfolding political reality that has been too long in the making to be resolved any time soon. The title is somewhat misleading, and I picked the book up thinking it was going to be a biography of sorts. However, other than some perfunctory material on Bid Laden's youth, the study isn't really about Bid Laden himself so much as it is about the violent political movement, of which he is a leader, that has evolved from Islamic eschatology. Bodansky takes his readers on a trip through the snake pit of Middle Eastern and radical Islamic politics, which he portrays as a world where wealth, self-interest, violence, religious doctrine, and state policy are intertwined inextricably. It's also a world where loyalties or even strategic alliances don't seem to exist much beyond ephemeral alignments around tactical objectives that shift with the political wind. In this light, Bodansky - who is a consultant to the U.S. government - reveals much about our supposed friends in the region. He describes Pakistan as one of the primary architects behind the terrorist infrastructure managed by Bid Laden and other leading Islamists. He portrays the Saudi government as a craven and tottering regime which continues to provide lavish funding to this infrastructure as a kind of protection money to keep it's activities away from Saudi soil. Bodansky, of course, turns his cynical eye on the U.S. too, reminding us that we ourselves collaborated in birthing this movement, nurturing its spectacularly successful war against our one-time enemy, the Soviet Union. As for the Islamists, they see themselves now as simply continuing to fight the same war, having destroyed one "superpower" and now taking aim at the other in their campaign to overturn the prevailing world order. Bodansky depicts them as dedicated to a eschatological vision in which all secular states are overthrown by whatever means necessary and replaced by a kind of global Islamic government, which will usher in heavenly peace and glory. The parallels between this vision and that of messianic communism are as striking as they are ironic, since both justify political violence as a tool necessary for achieving a glorious albeit it ill-defined future. Of the two visions, the Islamic seems more dangerous in the nuclear age, since doctrinaire communists, being atheists, were made cautious by their belief that they had to achieve their heaven on earth. Bodansky quotes extensively from Bid Laden and others, and their words make clear that they believe that in a global conflagration they would be sending themselves to heaven and their enemies to hell, not inhibiting themselves with much of a disincentive. Bodansky seems to know almost too much about some things, leading one to question the extent to which he might be interjecting his own supposition into this narrative as ostensibly factual material. For example, he states unequivocally the Bid Laden already possesses nuclear weapons, although not necessary the means to deliver them. While this may be true, Bodanksy doesn't provide much basis for his startling conclusion, nor for many of the other observations he makes about the private relationships said to exist between various terrorist factions and governments. In his introduction, he addresses the problem of the credibility of his material by saying that elucidating his sources would compromise their security. While on one level this seems entirely fair, it has the unfortunate effect of relieving the author of a burden which all academic writers should have to bear of drawing a crisp line between conjecture and well-grounded reporting. Despite these limitations, the big picture Bodansky draws clearly has the force of much knowledge behind it, and it is acquires a prophetic aura now in light of the events occurring after the book was written. Most Americans - myself included - are dangerously ignorant about Islam in all its manifestations, both good and bad. While this book, focussing as it does on a violent fringe, probably should be read alongside more balanced treatments of Islamic culture, I recommend it to anyone trying to make sense of the new geo-political environment in which we have suddenly found ourselves.
Rating:
Summary: Insight into the Demon's Cespool, Caves filled withSewage
Review: I heard Mr. Bodansky interviewed on NPR and turned to the only source for this book at the time, Amazon. He was brilliant in his analysis and extremely comprehensive, so the book seemed the next best step to following his ideas. I must say that the book was a bit overwhelming, but extremely useful. He truly opens the unsavory, sick, pathetic world of Islamic extremism to the average reader. The human refuse who pollute these pages are in such numbers and pass, page by page, in such succession I found myself mystified by their presence on the world scene unhindered in their passage from east to west. Whatever else this book teaches, surely most important is that alien beings walk openly under Western skies and will remain a danger to innocents for some time to come. Bin Laden and the defecation he ministers, the stench he releases into our free world is but a point of focus, an image to grasp in a poppy field of black blooms, a kind of ooze seeping from his decayed, cultural landfill through one of many openings into the groundwater of our world. This book is a must read for any concerned Western Thinker living above and unaccustomed to the creeps that promote hate from below.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Informative Book
Review: This book is a great book if you are one of those people who are into history or just like to read very interesting and informative books. I am not completely finished with the book but what I have read I would highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: False Colors
Review: I purchased this book because of an opening excerpt available at Amazon.com, which was well written and informative. The book as a whole however is untrustworthy. One comes upon this realization as a reader given the fact there are no sources cited. At the same time the author writes as if he had been present at all sorts of terrorist confabs. One example that took the cake for me was the description of a meeting between Saddam Hussein and his two sons. My sense was also that Arabic newspapers and Islamist organizations have been quoted out of context; the quotes are partial and limited, and a reader realizes these quotes could have been part of an explanation of terrorist acts, not an endorsement of them, as the author states or implies.
Rating:
Summary: Clearly identifies the enemy
Review: This very detailed account of bin Laden's rise through the ranks of international terrorism is a book that raises the question..why didn't we make the case to aggressively get this guy before 9/11. It also clearly demonstrates the extent to which terrorism networks have developed and coordinated their strategies with the active participation of Iran and other government sponsors. After reading this it would be hard to support anything short of a multi-front comprehensive campaign to rid the world of ALL the players involved. Bin Laden is portrayed as one cog, albeit an important one , in a much vaster and dangerous movement.
Well researched and written by an author who obviously knows the territory.
Rating:
Summary: Bin Laden, The Man Who Delcared War on America
Review: I'm sorry I was forced to give this book one star--it deserves none. This is one of the most poorly written books I've ever read. Many other reviewers have commented on the bias, lack of footnotes for assertions which are incredible, nonexistent order and coherence in the story, and the many other faults. I wish I had read these reviews before I reccommended this book for my book club. I may lose my membership over this one.
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