Rating: 
Summary: A strong implication of Iraq in world-wide terrorism...
Review: If you ever had doubts about the culpability of Iraq in international terrorism, reading this book will eliminate any of your questions. In this book, the author presents copious amounts of evidence which details Iraqi involvement in the first World Trade Center bombing as well as other terrorist attacks against Western(primarily American) targets. Reading this book will convince you of two things: 1) the stunning failure of the Clinton administration's foreign policy with regards to the Middle East 2) the necessity of confronting the Iraqi regime as part of our war against terrorism.
Rating: 
Summary: A very compelling argument
Review: In his June 24, 2004 speech at Georgetown University, former Vice President Al Gore endorsed this opinion offered by the Financial Times: "There was nothing intrinsically absurd about the WMD fears, or ignoble about the opposition to Saddam's tyranny -- however late Washington developed this. The purported link between Baghdad and al Qaeda, by contrast, was never believed by anyone who knows Iraq and the region. It was and is nonsense."Of course, this statement is nonsense. Laurie Mylroie has written 318-page book that makes a compelling case that Saddam played a role in the World Trade Center and offers numerous documents to bolster her case. The foreward to the paperback version was penned by R. James Woolsey 16 days after 9/11. Do these two individuals know anything about Iraq and the region? Mylroie was an adviser on Iraq to the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton, while Woolsey service as the director of the CIA during Clinton's first term. Myrolie's book reminds us of the case that the Clinton administration made concerning Iraq's WMD, its sponsorship of terrorism, and the threat that Saddam posed to the U.S. She also includes translations from numerous Arabic media to show how often Saddam had stated his intent to exact revenge on the United States. Many of the connections outlined by Myrolie may not indicate an operational relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. However, post-9/11, I believe we have to heed these words offered by Sen. Evan Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana: "Even if there's only a 10 percent chance that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden would cooperate, the question is whether that's an acceptable level of risk. My answer to that would be an unequivocal no. We need to be much more pro-active on eliminating threats before they're imminent.... Some of the intelligence is strong, and some of it is murky. But that's the nature of intelligence on a relationship like this-lots of it is going to be speculation and conjecture. Following 9/11, we await certainty at our peril." The threat findings of the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici in 1995 included the threat that state sponsors of terrorism (a desgination the State Department applied to Iraq during the entire Clinton administration) could hand over WMD to terrorist organizations or support them in other ways with plausible deniability. In other words, Iraq and al Qaeda were not going to take out a full-page ad in the New York Times to announce their relationship. That relationship needs to be ferreted out. Myrolie's book offers an excellent beginning in the effort to establish the relationship.
Rating:
Summary: A very compelling argument
Review: In his June 24, 2004 speech at Georgetown University, former Vice President Al Gore endorsed this opinion offered by the Financial Times: "There was nothing intrinsically absurd about the WMD fears, or ignoble about the opposition to Saddam's tyranny -- however late Washington developed this. The purported link between Baghdad and al Qaeda, by contrast, was never believed by anyone who knows Iraq and the region. It was and is nonsense." Of course, this statement is nonsense. Laurie Mylroie has written 318-page book that makes a compelling case that Saddam played a role in the World Trade Center and offers numerous documents to bolster her case. The foreward to the paperback version was penned by R. James Woolsey 16 days after 9/11. Do these two individuals know anything about Iraq and the region? Mylroie was an adviser on Iraq to the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton, while Woolsey service as the director of the CIA during Clinton's first term. Myrolie's book reminds us of the case that the Clinton administration made concerning Iraq's WMD, its sponsorship of terrorism, and the threat that Saddam posed to the U.S. She also includes translations from numerous Arabic media to show how often Saddam had stated his intent to exact revenge on the United States. Many of the connections outlined by Myrolie may not indicate an operational relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. However, post-9/11, I believe we have to heed these words offered by Sen. Evan Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana: "Even if there's only a 10 percent chance that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden would cooperate, the question is whether that's an acceptable level of risk. My answer to that would be an unequivocal no. We need to be much more pro-active on eliminating threats before they're imminent.... Some of the intelligence is strong, and some of it is murky. But that's the nature of intelligence on a relationship like this-lots of it is going to be speculation and conjecture. Following 9/11, we await certainty at our peril." The threat findings of the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici in 1995 included the threat that state sponsors of terrorism (a desgination the State Department applied to Iraq during the entire Clinton administration) could hand over WMD to terrorist organizations or support them in other ways with plausible deniability. In other words, Iraq and al Qaeda were not going to take out a full-page ad in the New York Times to announce their relationship. That relationship needs to be ferreted out. Myrolie's book offers an excellent beginning in the effort to establish the relationship.
Rating:
Summary: Chilling
Review: In reading this book, I couldn't help but to feel that Ms. Mylroie read a few too many Nancy Drew novels at summer camp. Nevertheless, she welds together a series of events that have convinced some in our government (among them, the hawkish Paul Wolfewitz and Donald Rumsfeld) that the 1993 WTC bombing - despite being executed by halfwits (read: the genius who attempted to collect his deposit from the truck rental company after he'd just detonated it under the WTC) - was actually planned by Iraqi intelligence. If she's correct, this nation faces a huge problem: In her book, we learn of the networks that have been ignored for too long, and about just what they have in store the United States. One hopes that she's wrong; but if she isn't, Sept. 11 is a wake up call from which we shrink at out own peril.
Rating:
Summary: A "Must Read" on State-Sponsored Terrorism
Review: Iraq expert, Dr. Laurie Mylroie, presents a compelling case linking Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi regime to the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Through painstaking and thorough research, Dr. Mylroie outlines the evidence and raises serious questions concerning the Clinton Administration's Iraq policy.
Her study also highlights the broader issue of US approaches to terrorism in general and state sponsored terrorism in particular.
This study has profound implications for US threat assessment in the post-September 11, 2001 environment.
Rating: 
Summary: Study of rationalization
Review: Laurie Mylroie must desperately want the U.S. to attack Iraq, for nothing else will explain the extraordinary lengths she goes on the very slimmest of evidence to blame the first World Trade Center attack on that country. Then, imagining her case on WTC I proven, she goes on to apply its thesis to virtually every terrorist attack on the U.S. in the Middle East since, on little more evidence than that such attacks served Iraqi interests (the same logic many Muslims use in blaming Israel for WTC II). Briefly, the only piece of real evidence that Iraq was responsible for WTC I is that one of the participants lived in Iraq and returned there afterwards and is said by neighbors to be an Iraqi government employee. Well, maybe, except the Iraqi was considered so cooperative by U.S. investigators, and to have played such a minor role, that he was not even arrested after the attacks. Why Iraq might not have Palestinian sympathizers in its country willing to volunteer to attack U.S. interests as every other country of the Middle East does is never discussed. Maybe the fellow was there as a volunteer, maybe as an observer, Given his tertiary role this one incident can hardly establish that WTC I was an Iraqi plot. Recognizing this, Mylroie spends most of the book in a futile effort to prove that Ramzi Yousef, the undisputed leader of the conspiracy, was an Iraqi agent. In this she fails altogether. Central to her thesis is the claim that Yousef was not the Pakistani citizen he claimed to be, but an Iraqi agent who used the passport which was stolen from its owner during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. This argument in turn rests on the slender reed that Yousef couldn't possible have grown 4 inches from the 5'8" inch height given him in the Pakistan passport at age 20 to Yousef's 6'0" height at the age of 24. Anyone familar with the unreliability of Pakistani documents (as I, as a person who frequently works with them certainly am) will be left entirely unmoved by any discrepancy in them. Quality control is a not an driving concept in that part of the world. From this tiny sparrow, Mylroie creates a remarkable spring, speculating that Yousef must be an Iraqi agent because after leaving the U.S. he fled from Pakistan to Iranian Balochistan, which has long been an area of Iraqi subversion against the Iranians. However, there are certainly more way of becoming familar with Iran than as an Iraqi intelligence agent. The fact is , as Ms. Mylroie laudably admits, British intelligence concluded that he was in fact the Pakistani citizen whose passport he held. Apparently he looks enough like him that prior acquaintances could not dispute his identity based upon video tapes or photographs of him. It is strange that Ms. Mylroie, didn't make any effort to bring these acquaintance from the U.K. to the U.S. to make or dispute a positive I.D. of Yousef. You would think it would be cheaper than publishing an entire book with its central issue still in doubt. In any event, if Yousef is an Iraqi agent, why would the Iraqis go to such extraordiary lengths to disguise his identity, and then send their other man directly from Iraq to the U.S. and back again under his own name and passport? In any event, Yousef's subsequent relocation to the Phillippines provides yet further evidence for the thesis that he is either formally or informally associated with Al Qaeeda, which has an extensive network in the Phillippines, something never associated with Iraq. What is more astonishing however than even Mylroie's willingness to declare Yousef an Iraqi agent with hardly a shard of evidence is her willingness to take this revelation and apply it to numerous terrorist attacks thereafter . Thus the attack on U.S. military installations in Saudi Arabia must be the fault of Iraqi agents because a) some unnamed Saudi intelligence agency says it is and b) Iraq would benefit from U.S. troops leaving the Gulf. More feeble still is her blaming the Kenyan and Tanzainian Embassy bombings on Iraq simply because they came shortly after a vague Iraqi threat to retaliate against the U.S. Quite aside from the fact that this crime has been firmly laid on Al Qaeeda's doorstep by a number of perpetrators' conviction in federal court and even Bin Laden's own indictment, it clashes directly with the fact that the WTC I attack occurred during the midst of an Iraqi "charm offensive" in which it was attempting to persuade the world through its good behavior to lift economic sanctions. Heads Mylroie wins, tails Iraq loses. Ever since the second World Trade Center attacks, neocons have been demanding that any War on Terrorism must be extended to Iraq, regardless of the fact that this would completely alienate whatever shards of Arab support the U.S. may have left, and the fact that Saddam would most likely be followed by a radical fundamentalist regime. With even the Israelis disputing Iraq's involvement in WTC II, Neocons have come to cite Mylroie's book frequently in their demands for a "final solution" to the problem of Saddam. However, if Mylroie's book is the best evidence available that Iraq is behind terrorist attacks against the U.S., it is no evidence at all. Unfortunately, only those willing to wade through this book are going to find that out. For the rest of the public, uncritical neocon references to her work is going to be as close as they get to reviewing the facts. Accordingly, Mylroie's book will doubtlessly serve its agitprop purpose, no matter how sparse its evidence or flawed its reasoning may be.
Rating:
Summary: Stark Revelations
Review: Laurie Mylroie's amazingly lengthy and detailed research documentary of the real reason for the attempt to kill 250,000 people points squarely to Saddam Hussein. The American justice system, geared to appease Saddam as part of the current Administration's support structure for the status quo, represented in court that Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind, had fled to Afghanistan, when according to his plane ticket, he had gone to a pro-Iraqi haven. This immense book breaks the assumption of ignorance of the American public.
Rating:
Summary: The Oracle on the Potomac
Review: Laurie Mylroie's prophetic book and television appearances are sometimes denounced in print and on T.V. as the ravings of a lunatic(Peter Bergen comes to mind, and of course the diplomatic braintrust behind Ben and Jerry). These men sound like KGB-assets trying to discredit and intimidate a middle-aged woman. Mylroie is the Yelena Sakharov of the War with Iraq, and I mean the war that started years ago. Recently, former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill charged that Bush began planning to oust Hussein before 9/11: "From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go."
What is so wrong with this logic? If Mylroie is right, Bush had better reasons than "only" Saddam's genocide. He had as his first reason the national security interests of the United States: Saddam had bombed the World Trade Center on 2-26-93. The "crazy" Mylroie said he would be back. And she was right. Mylroie thinks that the cost of Saddam remaining in power so long was the first bombing of the World Trade Center on 2-26-93 and the second bombing on 9-11-01. If this is so, both the Clinton and Bush Administrations need to trade notes with each other and level with the American people. The evidence that was hushed up needs a respectful hearing, not the dismissive KGB-style "she's crazy" slander. Mylroie has argued tirelessly that the Administration needs to be more up front about the real reasons it went to war with Iraq.
Some in this Administration (Wolfowitz) and in Mr. Clinton's (Woolsey) have read and commented favorably Mylroie's book, but evidently O'Neill has not read this book. He should not be commenting on Mr. Bush's Iraq policy if he has not read this book. Mylroie's thesis undermines O'Neill's dubious claims about the Administration's pre-emption and unilateralism. O'Neill said, "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do is a really huge leap."
The U.S. didn't act unilaterally; it acted without the U.N. because the U.N. wouldn't enforce its own rulings. France, Germany and Russia didn't help because they were making money by selling weapons, buying oil on the black market, and/or trying to recover bad debts. Most of our real friends did help. I think the coalition is something like 60 countries.
The Iraqi National Congress spokesman Entifadh Qanbar says that the Bush administration "opened official channels to the Iraqi opposition soon after coming to power, and discussed how to remove Saddam. The group opened an office in Washington shortly afterwards." The problem is, Saddam is not Gorbachev and would not have taken this gracefully.
As "crazy" Mylroie predicted in her book, Saddam retaliated viciously and spectacularly on 9-11 against a government that was clearly trying to force him out of power, just as Saddam had retaliated against Clinton in 1993. It is as if we had to be bombed at Pearl Harbor twice before anyone noticed. Mylroie contends that Saddam retaliated using "Al Qaeda" operatives on 9-11. Someone should point out to Mr. O'Neill that Saddam, not the U.S., used preemption.
I think fears that it would have been seen as "causing" 9-11 by provoking Saddam may explain why the Administration has tried to put a damper on all the evidence that M. Atta was in Prague on possibly four occasions, that he met there with an Iraqi intelligence officer named Al Ani, that Atta's bank account had a large payment after one visit to Prague, and that the Czechs say the Iraqi Intelligence Service was ordered to pay M. Atta money.
Mylroie points out that the Clinton Administration failed to pursue evidence that Iraq was behind the 1993 WTC bombing. She attributes this to a popular theory that terrorists now were no longer being used by governments to do their dirty work. Or perhaps Mr. Clinton's administration didn't want to be blamed for provoking Saddam.
Read Mylroie's book. The schizophrenic mix of leaks and denials about M. Atta and the links to Iraq make more sense after one absorbs this book.
Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking
Review: Makes the case that Ramzi Yousef was an agent of Iraq. He had a passport with Abdul Basit's name. Abdul was 4'7" at 16, 5'8" at 20 (Pakistani passports) 5'9" at 23 (Iraq passport) but when he would have been 24, Ramzi Yousef was 6 feet tall (by INS records and at the time of arrest.) His teachers in Scotland recalled that he was about 5'8". There is confusion about the time line of Basit's growth in "The New Jackals" so Mylorie includes images of the passports in an appendix to make her point. Yousef seemed to involve some unneeded individuals in the bombing possibly to create a false trails. After the bombing, Muhammad Salameh was left trying to get his deposit back from Ryder (for the van used to carry the bomb) to buy an airline ticket to flee. Yousef had ticket and a plan and disappeared like a professional. He later turned up in the Philippines with a plan for multiple simultaneous transpacific airline bombs. (And did a test bombing on one flight) There is always room for doubt but I think Mylorie makes a good case.
Rating:
Summary: Wake up America !
Review: Mylroie does a tremendous job of systematically documenting the efforts of Saddam to resume his, "mother of all wars" against the U.S.through his role in masterminding the world trade center bombing. Her plea for Americans to consider the broader national security implications of 'isolated' or 'unrelated' acts of violence in this nation should be considered with even greater seriousness as another Bush takes the helm. She has broken fertile ground in urging us to exhaust all possible legal and investigative avenues in protecting citizens from acts of mass violence and destruction. Thorough explanation and description characterizes her outstanding style of narration. This is a must read work for mideast, international relations or comparative political studies.
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