PERHAPS IT'S THE ELECTION YEAR or perhaps it's just the stage of my life, but I'm a little worried about our culture. Everywhere I look, I'm assaulted by images of people frantically searching for someone to follow, or by images of people seeking to lead. One would think that this would create a nice mix: the followers want a leader; the leader wants followers. Voila! A match made in heaven.

BARACK OBAMA, seemingly destined to be the democratic candidate for president, has taken the country by storm and everyone wants to know why. How can this one-term senator with almost no legislative accomplishments or clear plan for the future be prepared for the presidency, and why do tens of thousands of people turn out for his rallies, chanting his name like he was the Messiah?

Because they think he is.

Here is why: As Shelby Steele points out in his book A Bound Man, Obama, the son of a white mother and an absentee black father and essentially raised by prosperous, white mid-westerners, faces the dilemma all blacks in America face: How to deal with the majority that wields power over the minority?

Steele calls the usual racial response, "masking," wherein blacks reinvent themselves through their strategic relations with whites. Masking generally demonstrates itself in one of two ways. The first is the bargaining mask, where blacks say to whites, "I will not use America's horrible history of white racism against you, if you will promise not to use my race against me." In other words, Steele says, bargainers grant whites the innocence and moral authority they need in return for their goodwill and generosity. Bargainers give before they ask, and they trust that reciprocity will prevail -- that goodwill will elicit good will. Bargaining is effective because it begins with magnanimity. Examples of successful bargainers are Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, and Barack Obama.

The challenging mask, on the other hand, says, "Whites are incorrigibly racist until they do something to prove otherwise." This high ground as the historic victim of racism gives the challenger great moral power in the white community. In a society where the greatest shame has been white racism, the challenger has the power over the guilt and innocence of whites. This is why Don Imus, in penance for a racial aside on his show, did not seek absolution from Oprah Winfrey; instead, he went to one of the premiere challengers of the day: Al Sharpton. Imus did not go to see Colin Powell because Powell does not wield the racist stigma as his main source of power in American life; Sharpton does. And only a challenger can remove that stigma from whites whith finality, and then only when the challenger gets something in return: a public confession of racism, affirmative action, promises of diversity in hiring, etc.

But while challengers remain forever mired in racial conflict, bargainers can transcend those conflicts when the synergy of innocence given and gratitude received elevates them to an iconic status in the culture. Steele calls this the Iconic Negro, someone who embodies the highest and best longings of both races. Oprah Winfrey has achieved this status, as has Sidney Poitier. In dealing with them, whites can experience themselves shorn of racism, as people capable of complete human identification with a black person.

The drawback for both blacks and whites is that Oprah has obtained her iconic status through masking: she was a bargainer first. This is a tough position to be in: The Iconic Negro lives in that territory between the doubt they feel over the self-suppression they engage in in order to make things happen and the charge from their own group that their success proves them to be sellouts. But while they do not solve the country's race problem, they do nudge the culture in the right direction.

Barack Obama has become an Iconic Negro, which is why white women are swooning at his rallies. He offers racial absolution to a white populace weary of being accused of being racist. The problem for Obama, however, is in his own self-identification as black, rather than white. His bi-racialness makes him suspect to those wearing the challenger mask. Which is why Obama goes out of his way to downplay his privileged, white upbringing. After law school, instead of opting for Wall Street, he worked in the south Chicago projects and joined a black-themed church that essentially excludes whites. Even Obama was paying respects to the challenger mask.

But the real problem for Obama is not his race; it is the fact that he wears a mask at all. Both masks assume a fact not in existence: that no amount of black responsibility will lift the black race into parity with whites. Both masks are designed to deal with the white majority. So only transcendence from mask-wearing will raise the race, as it did a young Obama himself. But if black poverty and suffering are no longer automatically tied to white racism, then black uplift is dependent upon what blacks do. And if blacks are responsible for their fate, then whites no longer need to trade for their innocence with blacks, and mask-wearing blacks no longer have power to bestow racial absolution upon whites. Instead, they must be judged as individuals.

Can Obama achieve this worthy goal? Not so long as he wears a mask. Steele calls black responsibility the third rail of American race relations. If whites mention it, the stigma of racism falls upon them. If blacks mention it, they are Uncle Toms betraying their race by letting whites off the hook.

The only famous black who seems to have transcended race is Bill Cosby, who has recently become a great criticizer of the self-destructive aspects of black culture. He stages "call outs," where he challenges inner-city blacks to take charge of their families and raise their children with values and purpose. He brings on stage mothers of teenagers killed in gang violence, people who lost themselves to drugs, girls who all but destroyed their lives with teenage pregnancies. And, in a moment of great theater, he removed his Iconic Negro mask in public, when he said at the NAACP convention, "I don't care what white people think."

But it cost him. Bill Cosby is now something of a liability even to whites who privately admire his efforts. By refusing to wear any mask whatsoever, he is now a risk to white innocence, rather than a source of it. He no longer sells Jell-O, or anything else, on national television. But he has trancended race.

Cosby knows, and I believe, that only by seeking Martin Luther King's vision of America, where "a man will be judged, not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character," can we truly heal the racial divide. And yet, to listen to an Obama speech, for the subtle racial nods in the interstices (the incessant calls for "unification"), or to hear Michelle Obama lament that only with Barack's ascendency has she "been really proud to be an American," one can see that they both continue to wear masks, albeit different ones. Obama is an Iconic Negro, his public face that of the bargainer; Michelle seems to have donned the challenger mask.

But so long as they wear masks at all, the voters will suspect something is amiss. Before reading Steele's book, I, too, suspected something wrong in the candidacy of Barack Obama. I suspected he was not who he said he was. And Steele's book has given definition to my unease. I don't support Obama because he is a nutty liberal, not because he's black. And I can't support him because he wears a mask that hides his true identiy, the one he was raised with: the truthfulness and awkwardness of individuality not tied to race. To get my vote, he would have to promise to defend the country, not parley with the madmen who wish to kill us. And beyond that, he would have to dispense with the expectation that white racism has anything to do with black responsiblity. He would have to take off his mask and cease offering me racial absolution, which I don't want or need and which he cannot truly give.

But can Barack Obama remove his mask? If so, he runs the risk of becoming an individual like Bill Cosby, and will probably lose political and racial capital, both with whites and blacks. He may survive such a move, but the messianic specialness will evaporate. White Americans will no longer see the possibility of their own racial innocence in him.

And white women will stop fainting at his rallies.

HOLLYWOOD IS OFTEN ACCUSED of being about just one thing: money. Hollywood says it is just giving the public what it wants, and if that translates into money, so be it. Cultural conservatives fire back that no matter how much money flows into the entertainment barons' coffers, they should stop and consider that the product they make is not only over-priced, it is also dangerous. But Hollywood counters that it's only a movie and has no effect on the viewer; that it is merely reflecting society, not forming it.

These twin pylons framing the gate to the Magic Kingdom have stood a long time: On the left we have entertainment as public service; on the right we have entertainment as nothing more than a mirror with no deleterious effects.

In his book Hollywood Vs. America, film critic Michael Medved sets his sights on the pylon of entertainment as public service. Conservatives blast Hollywood, claiming that they would release tapes of the Manson murders (if there were any), if there was a buck to be made therefrom. While there there is ample evidence of this in Medved's book, he takes the argument a step further, stating that while Hollywood is no doubt about money, it's also about the power to re-make the world in its own image. To quote the Charlie Sheen character in Oliver Stone's Wall Street when he's chiding Michael Douglas for his apparently limitless greed: "How many yachts can you water-ski behind, Gordon?" Clearly, it was not merely money the Gekko character was after, it was power. And the power the left-leaning Hollywood lights desire is acceptance. Anyone who has ever auditioned for a play knows the feelings you get waiting for your turn with the casting director: inadequacy, the fear of losing out to someone not because they are better, but because they are better looking, of partisanship, cronyism, etcetera. Imagine this lowered self-esteem being the bedrock experience of your life and you begin to understand the kind of insecurities that plague most of the people in Hollywood. The hugely successful HBO series The Larry Sanders Show was about this very thing: a television talk-show host (Garry Shandling) who was so entirely cut off from his fellow man that he could only act "normal" when he was on the set.

The money that pours into entertainment coffers is seen by the denizens of tinsel town as a result of not only giving the audience what it wants, but as a vindication of their own insecurities and of the rightness of their views. Remember that most famous actors have minimal education and a narrow spectrum of life experience. Few have gone to college. Even fewer have served in the military or been successful in any business other than show. Almost none have any experience in public service beyond posing for an AIDS poster. This distorted person, however, has oodles of scratch, got it for being attractive or precociously imitative, and without a grownup's sense of perspective, thinks it's because they deserve it! No wonder they all sound like 7-year-olds when Larry King interviews them.

So money = power = a platform to expose your insecurities to the world. And the world, so starved for entertainment, will apparently take what it is given. If it's Saw IX, then so be it. 17-year olds take a Friday-night date to the multiplex, where they pack in to see an orgy of blood-letting, but their minds are really on the bump-and-grind in the back seat of the car after the show.

This tends to lend credence to filmmakers' defense of the other pylon: that what they purvey is merely entertainment, that no one is really watching it, that it's just two hours in the dark and doesn't really mean anything. Before I tackle that dubious defense, let's accept it for a moment: One the one hand, Mr. Producer, you believe your product is important enough to spend your life creating it; on the other hand, what you do is so unimportant that the audience will not remember it more than a couple of minutes after the credits roll. Oops! There goes your self-esteem again!

So what really allows these ego-bloated children to sleep at night is the belief that even though they're overpaid for what they do, what they do doesn't matter after all; they merely provide a non-fattening dessert to the main course of life: they can't be blamed for any weight gain in the body politic.

Conservatives shake their heads at such stupid arguments. Real life is full of the imitation of art. Every time such a connection is made: a Columbine, a Virginia Tech, etcetera, we shout to the Left Coast: "Look! They're "acting out"! They're copying your product! They're making pre-massacre videos, for crying out loud! They're looking for attention in the exact way and for the exact reasons you are! Don't you see it?

But the Alec Baldwins and Danny Glovers of the world just shrug and say there's no connection whatsoever. (Remember, you're talking to a 7-year-old here.) But a recent news headline seems to destroy their argument once and for all: in early December last, in Johnstown, Colorado, two teens were charged with the killing of the 7-year-old sister of one of them by beating her with imitations of moves from the "Mortal Kombat" videogame. Lamar Roberts, 17, and Heather Trujillo, 16, were baby-sitting Trujillo's half-sister, Zoe Garcia, while Zoe's mother was at work. Zoe lost consciousness and stopped beating after the teens hit, kicked, and body-slammed her, initiating moves used in the videogame. The autopsy showed she had a broken wrist, more than twenty bruises, swelling of the brain, and bleeding in her neck muscles and under her spine. Roberts admits to being drunk.

Now, to someone who can actually think, this is a perfect storm of parental abandonment, unsupervised children, alcohol, and the "entertainment" industry. Excise the entertainment portion and these same kids might have just gotten drunk and passed out while mom was at work. But now, turn on the tube, and an uninterrupted stream of anti-social behavior flows into the empty minds, hearts, and family rooms of emotionally and physically abandoned children, filling them with rage, hostility, and aggression. And who can they take it out on? The nearest victim of course: a child even younger than themselves.

When I learned of the story, I went online at CNN to look at the reader comments. All the posts expressed dismay about the murder, but few saw a connection between the videogame and the children's actions. I was dumbfounded: the accused children themselves admitted to trying out the moves in the videogame on little Zoe! How can there be a more direct connection? (Which only shows how effective Hollywood is at teaching values.)

One thing I have learned in life: do not waste your time arguing with a 7-year-old. The only solution is to send them to their room. I submit that Hollywood is just such a child. It denies that setting fire to the tablecloth will do any damage, and so I'm giving Hollywood a Time Out. There are many films I would like to see, and with my grownup sensibilities I can probably discern between the deleterious and the ennobling. But perhaps not. Perhaps we are all 7-year-olds inside; witness the wholesale destruction of our culture. The teenage girl who so blithely gives a grown man the finger from the safety of her car, the children who boldly smoke in front of adults outside convenience stores; the popularity of Brittney Spears... it all says children have taken over, abetted by their childish peers in Hollywood. They are running wild, drunk, destroying their own family room, setting fire to the kitchen, and now they are beating and killing each other.

I wonder if a Time Out is enough?

In my last post, I pointed out that Mitt Romney, as an active, involved member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was a liar. The lie was that he "came to" a belief in the wrongness of homosexuality and rightness of the anti-abortion cause. I asserted that no Mormon could possibly climb to the dizzying heights of Church leadership positions as he had and believe that homosexuality was not sinful and that abortion was anything short of murder. The only answer I could deduce from Romney's Mitt-flopping on these important issues is that when he was asked to choose between his private beliefs and his public actions, Mitt choose to lie, and he did it for the pathetic reason of personal and political gain.

Most men would much rather be found on God's right hand at the last day than be elected president of the United States, if it meant denying their faith. This is as it should be. An oath to God certainly trumps prior agreements made between men. And if a man makes an oath to God, and later makes another, conflicting agreement with man, the previous oath to God should take precedence. In the words of Thomas More, a man who would break a solemn oath "needn't hope to find himself again."

Fortunately, such conflicts are rare. In modern life, oaths exist almost exclusively in the church, the legal system, and politics. Occasionally, there are conflicts between man-made agreements and covenants with God. Some Americans were disturbed by the religion of 1960 presidential candidate John Kennedy, which hinted at a conflict between his duties as a Catholic and his duties as president. He responded that if elected, he would be under no obligation to obey the Pope. And of course that was true, for lay Catholics make no such oath of obedience to the Holy See.

But there is such an oath in Mormonism, and it is undertaken in the LDS temple ceremony, commonly called the "endowment," a term used in the sense of valuable knowledge granted to mortals by God. The knowledge is communicated in an allegorical ritual detailing mankind's journey from a pre-earth life with God himself, to mortality here on earth, where we are to be tested to see if we will be obedient to God's laws, thus enabling us to return to His presence after death. At each stage in the endowment, participants are required to make sacred covenants of obedience to such laws, including the Law of Sacrifice (the Mosaic Law), the Law of the Gospel (Christ's teachings), the Law of Chastity, and finally and ultimately, the Law of Consecration.

While much of the endowment is shrouded in mystery due to a covenant to not discuss it outside the temple itself, the covenants themselves are not mysterious; they are simple, straight-forward agreements made with God designed to hold the participant to high standards of moral and ethical behavior. Temple-going Mormons take these covenants very seriously; indeed until recently the endowment covenants were made under penalty of death should they be revealed to the outside world. Though that penalty was excised from the endowment in 1990, participants are still reminded that breaking or revealing those covenants will bring upon them the wrath of God. Yet there is nothing in the endowment covenants that conflicts with the actions of any patriotic American citizen. Most of the covenants originate in the Bible, encouraging Mormons to be "honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous," and to do "good to all men."

A covenant, by definition, is more than an agreement between men; it is a solemn oath made between man and God. In our secular society, such covenants are reserved for the courts, oaths of citizenship, and certain public offices. When a foreign national becomes a U.S. citizen, he makes a sacred covenent:

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

A greater obligation is required, and a higher oath is taken, when a person becomes the president of the United States. The president-elect places his left hand on the Bible and raises his right hand and says:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

The question in this presidential election cycle is whether Mitt Romney can, in good faith, take such an oath. The difficulty arises because Romney has sworn ultimate allegience to something other than the Constitution. In the LDS temple endowment, which Romney undertook over forty years ago, he raised his right arm and covenanted "before God, angels, and these witnesses" to obey the Law of Consecration:

You . . . consecrate yourselves, your time, talents, and everything with which the Lord has blessed you, or with which he may bless you, to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for the building up of the Kingdom of God on the earth and for the establishment of Zion.

Romney's oath wasn't made simply to God; it was made specifically to the Mormon church. And it wasn't simply to participate, obey the teachings, or financially support the Church; it was to consecrate ("set apart") everything he has, not to God in general terms, but specifically to the LDS church. The wording of the oath puts it in direct conflict with the presidential oath: his first and last fealty is to the LDS church, not to the Constitution of the United States.

We've already seen the how Mitt Romney lies to protect his personal beliefs. Can there be any doubt that should a real conflict arise, President Romney will choose the Mormon church over the United States of America?

Yet he lied again. In a recent speech, he said, "When I place my hand on the Bible and take the oath of office, that oath becomes my highest promise to God." (emphasis mine). He continued, "Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions. Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin." He concluded by saying, "If I am fortunate to become your president, I will serve no religion, no one group, no one cause and no one interest."

Yet clearly, to temple-going Mormons, the Oath of Office of the President is not their highest promise to God. And while we do not know yet what kind of influence the LDS church will have on a President Romney, still he has made a solemn covenant to obey them and to place the interests of the LDS church above all else. Finally, it is an outright lie that a believing Mormon will separate the affairs of religion and politics. In the early 1970s, the LDS church entered the political sphere in a very public way to oppose the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. Though in recent years its public advocacy has been more muted, its philosophy has not materially changed since Joseph Smith ran for president in 1844 on a platform of a "theocratic democracy," with the goal of a U.S. government informed and influenced by Biblical and LDS theology.

Again, Mitt has proven that he will say anything to get elected. In the past he has lied about his views on homosexuality and abortion. And, as if that were not enough, he is now lying about the most serious, sacred oath an American can take, the Oath of Office of the President of the United States.

I hope American voters will not force Mitt Romney to choose between his church and our nation.

NEXT: The real reason Mitt Romney cannot (and should not) be president.

OVER THE LAST TWO POSTS, I've chronicled the remarkable events leading up to 9/11 from Lawrence Wright's work The Looming Tower. In this final post, I'll continue the "highlighter worthy" events of the eve of the terrorist attack. I'm sure many of these events will be a surprise to the reader, as they were to me.

• Most men who joined the jihad did so in a country other than the one in which they were reared. Alone, alienated, and often far from his family, the exile turned to the mosque where he found companionship and the consolation of religion. Islam was more than a faith--it was an identity. (344)

• The Hamburg Cell, the nucleus of what would become the co-conspirators of 9/11, were able to fly below the authorities' radar. The new Germany had enshrined tolerance into its constitution, including the most openhanded political asylum policy in the world. In recoiling from its extremist past, Germany inadvertently became the host of a new totalitarian movement. (345)

• Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 masterminds, stated in his will: "No pregnant woman or disbelievers should walk in my funeral or ever visit my grave. No woman should ask forgiveness of me. Those who will wash my body should wear gloves so that they do not touch my genitals." The anger this statement directs at women and its horror of sexual contact invites the thought that Atta's turn to terror had as much to do with his own conflicted sexuality as it did with the clash of civilizations. (347) A fatwa was ordered on the Islamic journalist who dared suggest these young men would not have carried out 9/11 if they'd had a healthy sexual life.
• Nawaf al-Hamzi and Khaled al-Mihdhar, both 9/11 conspirators, easily obtained U.S. visas because they were Saudi citizens. (349)
• The CIA knew about Hamzi and Mihdhar withheld this information from other governmental agencies, fearing prosecutions resulting from specific intelligence might compromise its relationship with foreign intelligence services, notwithstanding there were safeguards to protect confidential information, and the FBI worked routinely with the agency on similar operations. May in the CIA feared, however, that the FBI was too blundering and indiscriminate to be trusted with sensitive intelligence. (352). Such turf-protection was the key weakness of American foreign intelligence before 9/11. I fear nothing has changed.
• Ramzi Yousef, mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was being flown past the towers on his way to stand trial. One of the agents pointed and said, "See, they're still standing." Yousef said, "They wouldn't be if we had more money." (357) This is for those who think President Bush is responsible for all Islamic terrorism against the west. That was back in 1993, when the nation was suffering under the laconic and narcissistic Bill Clinton.
• On October 12, 2000, the U.S.S. Cole was bombed by an explosives-laden skiff in the Aden, Yemen, harbor. OBL later said, "The destroyer represented the capital of the West, and the small boat represented Mohammed." (361) For those who do not believe Islamofascism is religious in nature.
• OBL was born in Yemen, in an area known as the "Hadramout," which means "death has come." (364)
• Yemeni authorities arrested Fahd al-Quso, who was supposed to videotape the Cole bombing, but overslept. Quso admitted that he had delivered money to one of his co-conspirators, Khallad, in Bangkok. Khallad was linked to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The FBI sent Khallad's photo to the CIA, asking about this connection. The CIA withheld information about the Malaysia meeting of Khallad and Quso, which hampered the pursuit of judstice in the death of 17 American sailors. (372). If this information had been given the FBI, they could have found Hamzi and Mihdhar in the U.S., and 9/11 might have been prevented!
• Bill Clinton did nothing in response to the Cole bombing, as it came in the midst of his Monica problems and the upcoming presidential election. OBL's belief in American timidity had once again been proven. (374)
• In April 2001, Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Afghan Northern Alliance commander and enemy of the Taliban, told American officials in Paris that he had learned of al-Qaeda's intent to perform a terrorist act against the U.S. that would be vastly greater than the bombings of the American embassies in Africa. (381)
• Bill Clinton's Justice Department reversed intelligence policy in 1995. The new policy regulated the exchange of information between FBI agents and criminal prosecutors, but not among the agents themselves. FBI headquarters misinterpreted the policy, turning it into a straitjacket for its own investigators. (387)
• In July, 2001, Phoenix FBI agent Ken Williams wrote headquarters, saying, "The purpose of this communication is to advise the bureau and New York of the possibility of a coordinated effort by OBL to send students to the U.S. to attend civil aviation universities and colleges." His warning was ignored. (395)
• In mid-August, a flight school in Minnesota expressed concern to the FBI about a student, Zacarias Moussaoui, who asked about NYC flight patterns and whether the cockpit door could be opened during flight. The INS arrested him, but FBI headquarters would not allow agents to examine Moussaoui's laptop computer because the agents could not show "probable cause" for their search. (396) One wonders what probable cause would have sufficed? A cartoon showing a plane striking the towers?
• If the FBI had been allowed access to the laptop, it would have discovered a letter of employment from Infocus Tech, which was signed by Yazid Sufaat, whose name meant nothing to the FBI, but the CIA knew Sufaat was at the conspirator's meeting in Malaysia. The FBI was not guiltless, either. It failed to give terrorism czar Dick Clarke any of the above information. (397)
• On September 9, Ahmed Shah Massoud was assassinated by two men posing as Arab TV journalists. His murder was ordered by OBL. (401)
• John O'Neill, the former FBI chief of counterterrorism and head of security for the World Trade Center for just three weeks, was killed in the attack when he went back inside the tower to help with the evacuation. (407)
• Following the attack, America prepared to invade Afghanistan in pursuit of OBL, who escaped into Pakistan. (420)

9/11 was a devilish conjunction of evil intent, American hubris, and sheer luck. Though I do not believe it will happen again in the same way (airplanes used as bombs), I have no doubt that it will happen again. Most likely, a dirty bomb in a container shipment in a southern California harbor, which when detonated will kill thousands in this densely-populated area. The winds will then carry the radioactivity inland, sickening and killing tens of thousands more. Since at present U.S.Customs physically inspects only 6% of all incoming container cargo, this scenario has a high likelihood of success. God help us if we refuse to help ourselves.

LAST TIME I TRACED THE HISTORY of Islamofascism from its inception to the late 1980s, when al-Qaeda ("the base") was formed by Osama bin Ladin (OBL) and his rival (later co-conspirator) Dr. Ayman Zawahiri, as detailed in Lawrence Wright's masterpiece The Looming Tower. I now continue with more "highlighter worthy" excerpts from this fascinating book up to the eve of 9/11:

OBL is reputed to suffer from kidney failure; there is no evidence of this. Rather, he likely suffers from Addison's disease, a disorder of the endocrine system marked by low blood pressure, weight loss, muscle fatigue, stomach irritability, sharp back pain, dehydration, and an abnormal craving for salt. (159)

Saudi Arabia, only 1% of the world Muslim population, supports 90% of the expenses of the entire fundamentalist and radical Wahhabi faith, overriding other traditions of Islam. (170)

Bin Ladin announced his murderous intentions back in 1982, "When America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon (to stop the shelling of Israeli towns), as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted." (172)

Although al-Qaeda was originally formed to oppose Marxism in Afghanistan, where it had America as an ally, OBL turned the organization into an anti-American terrorist cabal because he is rooted in the 7th century where Christianity (evidenced by his use of the term "Crusaders") was not just a rival, but the archenemy. (194)

Significance of September 11th to Muslims: On September 11, 1683, in Vienna, the king of Poland began the battle that turned back the farthest advance of Muslim armies. This is why that date was chosen for the attack on America. For the next 300 years, Islam would be in retreat. (194)

Al-Qaeda trained the suicide bombers that attacked the Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon in 1983. (197)

Omar Abdul Rahman (the Blind Sheik), despite being listed as a terrorist on the State Dept. watch list, was granted entry into the US and traveled to mosques nationwide, calling on Muslims to "cut the transportation of their (the West's) countries, tear it apart, destroy their economy, burn their companies, eliminate their interests, sink their ships, shoot down their planes, kill them on sea, air, or land." (201)

Though it is unclear whether OBL sent Ramzi Yousef to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993, Yousef did learn his bomb-craft in an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. (202)

OBL told trainees at al-Qaeda camps: "America appears mighty, but it is actually weak and cowardly. Look at Vietnam. Look at Lebanon. Whenever soldiers start coming home in body bags, Americans panic and retreat. Such a country needs only to be confronted with two or three sharp blows, then it will flee in panic, as it always has. For all its wealthy and resources, America lacks conviction. It cannot stand against warriors of faith who do not fear death." (214)

In Somalia, when the bodies of a downed helicopter crew were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, Pres. Clinton quickly withdrew all American soldiers from the country. OBL's analysis of  American cowardice had been proven correct. (215)

At the end of 1993, a Sudanese general had reportedly obtained black market uranium. OBL had been working with the Sudanese government to develop chemical agents that could be used against the Christian rebels in the south. OBL paid for the uranium, but it turned out to be red mercury (cinnabar), a substance used in nuclear scams for more than 25 years. (218)

The first man to betray OBL was Jamal al-Fadl, a Sudanese, who stole more than $100,000 from al-Qaeda. He sold his story to the Americans for $1 million. While in protective custody, he won the New Jersey Lottery! (225)

The Taliban ("students") in Afghanistan arose in 1994, most of them orphans who had been raised in refugee camps and who were outraged by the chaos and depravity of the rule of mujahideen. The liberators in the war against the Soviets had turned out to be more barbaric rulers than their enemies. (255) The Taliban became the largest growers of opium poppies in the world. (259)

August 23, 1996: OBL declares war on America: "Terrorizing you is a legitimate and moral obligation." (266)

Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, uncle of WTC bomber Ramzi Yousef, approached OBL in 1996 with several schemes to attack America, including one that would require pilots to crash airplanes into buildings. (268)

Iranian-backed terrorists Hezbollah were responsible for the 1996 explosion at the Khobar Towers, a military housing complex in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 and injuring 400. (271)

The tortured reasoning of the Islamists which license them to murder non-Muslims: The Islamic nation is in misery because of illegitimate leadership, due to the Christian-Jewish alliance that emerged after the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, in which Britain and France divided the Arab lands between them, and the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which called for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Soon after, the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and with it the Muslim caliphate. This is all seen as an ongoing campaign by the Christian-Jewish alliance to suffocate Islam, using such tools as the United Nations, compliant Arab rulers, multinational corporations, satellite channels, and international relief agencies. (294)

An al-Qaeda computer was obtained in 1997 by the CIA. It was owned by Zawahiri's closest political confidant. Called the "Rosetta Stone of al-Qaeda," it was nevertheless not made available to the FBI because the Bureau would attempt to use the information as evidence at trials, and it would become public, which would ruin its value as intelligence as far as the CIA was concerned. (305) This kind of stand-off, resulting in no intelligence passing between the agencies, would contribute in large part to 9/11.

Another captured al-Qaeda computer in 1998 linked OBL to the killing of American servicemen in Somalia, which resulted in a criminal indictment against him in Federal District Court in New York. ( 302)

August 1998: Al-Qaeda suicide bombers attack American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya (213 dead, 4,500 injured), and Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania (11 dead, 85 wounded). (308) Five embassies had been targeted, but luck and intelligence had saved the other three. FBI investigators were stunned to learn that nearly a year earlier an Egyptian member of al-Qaeda had walked into the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi and told the CIA about the bombing plot. (311)

Shortly after the embassy bombings, Monica Lewinsky testified before a Washington grand jury about her sexual relationship with Bill Clinton. In the minds of Islamists, the relationship between the president and the intern perfectly symbolized Jewish influence in America, and any military response to the bombings was likely to be seen as an excuse to punish Muslims and divert attention from the scandal. (319)

Soil samples at a Sudanese chemical plant purportedly owned by OBL contained traces of EMPTA, an essential chemical in the nerve gas VX. On August 20, Clinton authorized missiles to destroy the plant, which turned out to be a pharmaceuticals plant, and with which OBL had nothing to do. Sudan then let the two accomplices in the embassy bombings escape and the FBI lost an invaluable opportunity to interview al-Qaeda insiders. (320)

Though the NSA was able to monitor satellite phone calls, it refused to share the raw data with the FBI, the CIA, or even the White House. (321)

At the same time as the aspirin factory attack, intel indicated OBL was at the Khost al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Several of the 66 Tomahawk missiles that rained down camp failed to detonate. OBL sold them to China for $10 million. (323)

Iraq was an ally in al-Qaeda's war on the west; there had been a series of contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda operatives. Iraqi delegations met with OBL, who asked for weapons and training caps inside Iraq. (335) Nevertheless, FBI director Louis Freeh reportedly stressed in White House meetings that al-Qaeda posed no domestic threat. OBL did not even make the FBI's most wanted list until June 1999.

In December 1999, al-Qaeda-trained Ahmed Ressam was arrested at the Port Angeles, Washington, border crossing. In his trunk were the makings of an Oklahoma City-type bomb, intended for LAX. (337)

January 3, 2000: a plot is accidentally foiled by Yemeni fisherman who encountered a fiberglass skiff containing C-4 explosives destined for the USS The Sullivans, which was refueling in the Aden harbor. (339)

Between ten and twenty thousand trainees passed through Afghanistan al-Qaeda training camps from 1996 until they were destroyed in 2001. (341)

The media helps the terrorists: Zawahiri was keen on the use of biological and chemical warfare, saying, "Despite their extreme danger, we only became aware of them when the enemy drew our attention to them by repeatedly expressing concern that they can be produced simply." (343)

Hollywood helps out, too: Al-Qaeda trainees spent considerable time planning how to pull off terrorist maneuvers. At night they would often watch Hollywood thrillers, looking for tips. The movies of Arnold Schwarzenegger were particular favorites. (343)