BOOK REVIEW OF THE DECADE

OSAMA BIN LADEN - If you (Americans) are sincere in your desire for
peace and security, we have answered you. And if Bush decides to carry
on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read
the book "Rogue State," which states in its introduction: "If I were
president, I would stop the attacks on the United States: First I would
give an apology to all the widows and orphans and those who were
tortured. Then I would announce that American interference in the
nations of the world has ended once and for all."

IN THE LAST 48 HOURS, Bill Blum's "Rogue State" has risen from the
206,000th most sold book on Amazon to 35th place, thanks presumably to
the favorable review by Bin Laden.

BLUM is a survivor of Washington's 1960s. He left the State Department
in 1967, because of his opposition to what the United States was doing
in Vietnam and helped to found the ground-breaking alternative paper,
the Washington Free Press. In 1969, he wrote and published an expose of
the CIA in which was revealed the names and addresses of more than 200
employees. As a freelance journalist he has covered the United States,
Europe and South America. In the mid-1970's, he worked in London with
former CIA officer Philip Agee and his associates on their project of
exposing CIA personnel and their misdeeds. 

His book had previously received favorable reviews - as have his other
works. For example, Gore Vidal wrote, "Rogue State forcibly reminds us
of Vice President Agnew's immortal line: 'The United States, for all its
faults, is still the greatest nation in the country'."  And your editor
provided a blurb: "Bill Blum came by his title easily.  He simply tested
America by the same standards we use to judge other countries. The
result is a bill of wrongs -- an especially well-documented encyclopedia
of malfeasance, mendacity and mayhem that has been hypocritically
carried out in the name of democracy by those whose only true love was
power." But neither Vidal nor Smith came close to lifting the "Rogue
State" into the double digits.

BILL BLUM - It was in the early days of the fighting in Vietnam that a
Vietcong officer said to his American prisoner: "You were our heroes
after the War. We read American books and saw American films, and a
common phrase in those days was 'to be as rich and as wise as an
American'. What happened?" An American might have been asked something
similar by a Guatemalan, an Indonesian or a Cuban during the ten years
previous, or by a Uruguayan, a Chilean or a Greek in the decade
subsequent. The remarkable international goodwill and credibility
enjoyed by the United States at the close of the Second World War was
dissipated country by country, intervention by intervention."

ORDER ROGUE STATE
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1567511945/progressiverevieA/

ROBERT FISK, INDEPENDENT UK - It's a game. Bin Laden has no intention of
calling an end to his own war and nor has George Bush and nor has Tony
Blair. The Bin Laden offer, almost certainly, is intended to be
rejected. He wants Bush and Blair to refuse it. Then, after the next
attack, will come the next audio tape. See what happens when you reject
our ceasefire? We warned you. And we'll ask: is it him? So why no video
tape? Never before in history have so many wanted men sent pictures and
messages and video tapes out of the dark.

The irony, of course, is that Bin Laden is now partly irrelevant. He has
created al-Qa'ida. His achievement - that word should be seen in context
- is complete. Why bother hunting for him now? It's a bit like arresting
the world's nuclear scientists after the invention of the atom bomb. The
monster has been born. It's al-Qa'ida we have to deal with. . . 

It was only a few months ago that Bin Laden was bombarding us with
explanations for his movement's attacks. Why did no one ask, he said,
why Sweden was not assaulted? And so, I suppose, we can indeed fear more
attacks on the United States, more bombing raids, further chapters in
the "war on terror".

And all the time we in the West fail to look for a way to end this "war"
. How about some justice in the Middle East? How about lifting the
blanket of injustice that has lain across the region for so many
decades? Muslims there will probably like some of the democracy we say
we're trying to export to them. They would also like human rights off
our Western supermarket shelves.

But they would also like another kind of freedom - freedom from us. And
this, it seems, we are not going to give them. So the war goes on. Stand
by for more audio tapes, and more threats, and more death.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article339819.ece