Find Perfect Soldiers: The 9/11 Hijackers: Who They Were, Why They Did It By Terry McDermott Shown In Document
put this book down, A great read from start to finish, A must read for anyone interested in this who flew the aeroplanes into the world trade centre, Excellent account of how the attacks were planned and who the perpetrators were, Plenty on information on the four pilots, Would have been good to learn a bit about the muscle men and their families, At this writing, its been sixteen years since the/attacks and tragedies, When it happened, I read all I could find to try to learn the what and how it happened, The who and why answers are difficult to find, and hard to understand, SinceIve read quite a bit, and this book is a very good source of knowledge about the young men who died believing they did their Gods work.
Its an interesting read and I would recommend it to anyone looking for basic information on the/bombers, their background, and some of the whys but not all of them! Just an excellent read! full of information on thehijackers and how they went from college students to Islamic radical terrorists.
The only confusing thing for me as an American/English speaker were the names of the terrorists as their native names were strings of Arab names, some as long asornames strung together, many of them look/sound alike.
Also some of the names are not the names we are used to hearing on TV or the news, as an example Mohammed Atta is not called that thru the majority of the book, as he did not use that name until he came to the USA.
One other minor complaint is the group of individual photos of the hijackers, includes all of them except the main guys, the pilots and leaders Atta etc and the photos do not have the names under each photo but listed in a group blurb under the photos.
As difficult as the names are, it would have been easier for someone like me to put the name under each photo, as I like to associate names with photo/faces.
still the book is great and I read the entire book all the way thru and learned a lot from it, about how evil really works.
Know your enemy. This is a really well written and informative book, I need it to go further though and I'm not sure that's possible, These young men all started out so normal right in the middle of the bell shaped curve for their cultures, What happened to send them off to hijack planes The answer given is so simple "hung around with a terrorist
crowd and were open to their persuasion" it's hard to wrap my head around it.
For something so horrifying, I guess I was expecting a horrifying transformation, As such, the possibility/probability of it happening again is overwhelming, McDermott's Perfect Soldiers evokes Jon Krakauer's best work, in its vivid, absorbing and detailed reconstruction of theterrorists and their minders in the years leading to/.
Utterly depressing to read that most of these men were either ignorant and unworldly the hit team of musclemen or unpleasant, utterly boring misanthropes, How these screwups succeeded without getting caught is one of the many tragedies of/,
Their failings played right into the hands of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Osama Bin Laden, The latter, along with other Al Qaeda organizers are depicted as truly unrepentant, resourceful, unrelenting evildoers,
Phenomenal book. My one and only criticism is that the author seems to rush through the day that was/itself, With so much ancillary material around, he chooses not to go into any detail of what actually happened in the planes, when he could have delivered perhaps the best reconstruction of that fateful day.
An eye
opening account of the Twin Towers bombers who really believed they would have a preferential place in Paradise and how their mission was carefully planned Terry McDermott has made a well written and well researched investigation of the/hijackers.
His work focuses on the pilots, plus Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the/mastermind, Osama bin Laden is to a lesser extent covered, though hisandfatwas against Americans are included in the appendix, Steering clear of conspiracy theory nonsense, McDermott nonetheless supplies critical questions in the endnotes, Overall an important book, the "Perfect Soldiers" are shown really to be ordinary men, made extraordinary by the forces of radical Islam, The starke evil of the hijackers could wear an alarming human face, Highly recommended. A competent overview of thePilots activities before they came to the US, Unfortunately much too vague about their movements in the US, If someone can recommend an author that covers the hijackers US timeline in greater detail, Id appreciate it very much, So far the best resource Ive found is the complete/timeline at history commons, The only in depth research on who they were and why the suicide bombers carried out those atrocious attacks on/, If after reading this your still a 'truther' then the rot has spread far indeed, A really good read. Took a lot of hard work to dig up the subtle movements, and feints of this rat pack, I found the rapid radicalization of seemingly normal men quite disturbing, Flawed men who violated, in the days preceeding their crime, the very tenants of their beliefs, Sex, booze and porn in the days preceding their vile act, in the very country their touted as corrupt and dishonest, And the point was Hardly perfect, and hardly soldiers, their sodden lives were dishonorable period, The accounts of the hijacker's lives show a disturbing banality, For figures that until their death lived such illusive and insignificant lives the biographies are superbly detailed and comprehensive,
The style of writing is informative and generally fair and balanced given the nature of the subjects, It is probably the clearest account of the events leading to/that has been written,
Two minor criticisms: Every major religion has its share of extremists, Islam is no exception. The book implies a general malaise than is probably deserved, All major religions have their high and low points: prior to the renaissance, Arabic scholars preserved much of previous eastern and western philosophy, while making significant advances in algebra, medicine and navigation.
The description of the countries and places in which much of the plotting occurs sometimes lacks context but not accuracy, E. g. , although the authors' description of Cairo is superb, but as far as cities go, it surpasses most of the developing world, both for safety and quality of life.
Also, to state that German bureaucracy conducted minimal monitoring of Islamic extremists is true but at the time the US wasn't doing such a great job itself.
Overall this is a superbly written book that is very readable, It appears to be very well researched and is an excellent set of biographies, I read this book inbased on several reviewers stating it was the best researched story of how/happened which is where the book actually finishes and as such it certainly is the best I have read on a topic which has had reams written on it since that tragic day.
The evidence compiled for when it was printed inas reflected in the comprehensive footnotes shows a level of research by a trained journalist which is impressive he is able to nail several matters where the confusion shown in other books is either incorrect analysis or simply ignores the full evidence.
But what makes this book such a great contribution to understanding the event is it proves three sad home truths:
The Al Quaeda organization despite its demonization since by others as an international terrrorist organization was never than a very small and opportunistic cadre of plotters who were consistently amateurish as reflected by several mistakes it made but fortunate in that they were not picked up on the best example is the study of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's activities in understanding how and what they achieved.
. These key plotters were able to identify and use very ordinary people to commit the hijacking from among a large disillusioned and disaffected young muslims community which itself was disconnected from its families and roots after having visited Pakistan and Afghanistan camps post the Taliban take over and studying abroad especially in Germany.
. Finally the luck of the plot not being discovered owed a lot to many security organizations US and non US simply not as a matter of policy sharing and conferring and so not picking up on several events or available evidence as matters developed slowly over several months.
One suspects this will remain by far the best book on this aspect of/for some time, The attacks of September,, were a calamity on a scale few had imagined possible, In their aftermath, we exaggerated the men who perpetrated the attacks, shaping hasty and often mistaken reporting into caricatures we could comprehend monsters and master criminals equal to the enormity of their crime.
In reality, the/hijackers were unexceptional men, not much different from countless others, It is this ordinary enemy, not the caricature, that we must understand if we are to have a legitimate hope of defeating terrorism, Using research undertaken in twenty countries on four continents, Los Angeles Times correspondent Terry McDermott provides gripping, authoritative portraits of the main players in the/plot.
With brilliant reporting and thoughtful analysis, McDermott brings us a clearer, nuanced, and in some ways frightening, understanding of the landmark event of our time.
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