It was by coincidence that I was reading this over the 9/11 20th anniversary and finished it today. On September 11 I read this book all day instead of watching the all day line up of memorial programs on television. This is a well written and timely book.
Everything about this book was an eyeopener because so much has been learned about 9/11 and the Iraq War in the past twenty years. I've never read any of Peter Bergen previous books but I've been familiar with his television journalism since the mid 1990's and in particular his work as a national security and terrorism analyst for CNN. When I saw this recently published biography of Osama bin Laden by Bergen I knew I wanted to read it. I requested an e-book copy from the public library almost immediately upon release and was happy to have a copy within a month.
Although there has been a lot of books about bin over the years and a few by this author too but this book clears up a lot of misinformation, lies and other falsehoods made possible by the recent declassification of the thousands of documents found in bin Laden's home at the time of his death including his journals.
During the recent 20th anniversary and the ending of the war in Afghanistan there have been a lot of former administration officials being interviewed or just giving their opinions about what happened twenty years ago and on the current events. One of the most disgusting characters spouting out nonsense has been Donald Rumsfeld who in particular is revealed in this book to have been knowingly pushing lies and total misinformation about Osama bin Laden and Saddam of Iraq for his own political purposes. He is shown to be one of the main architects of the failure of American Middle East policy of the last twenty years along with Dick Cheney. History is surely being very tough on the two clowns.
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