THIS BOOK IS an eye-opener for all those who doubted A the need to go to war to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Despite its liberal author’s wishes. it mav even voint towards the inevitabilitv of an ~mkricank ar in iran to to.v ~leth e * Islamic regime there. But let me start by going to the beginnings of Al-Qaeda. Who is Osama bin Laden, and what is new, according to Jason Burke, about his vision – – and conduct in the long story of Islamic terror against freethinkers and non-Muslims?

Imagine that you are a young Saudi millionaire in the earlv 1980s. Your father has died in a helicovter crash and left you at least a hundred million pounds in his construction business. You are steeped, as is everyone else who has gone through the Saudi educational system, in a