Originally intending this volume as a simple updated edition of The War on Freedom: How & Why America Was Attacked, September 11, 2001 , Ahmed (executive director, Institute for Policy Research & Development) explains that the amount of material added to his analysis of the events of the September 11 attacks justified releasing the text as a completely new book. In the work, he argues that US and Western foreign policy is the root of all aspects of the origins of the attacks from CIA promotion of Bin Laden in the 1980s to the failure of the US national security apparatus on the day itself, suggesting that the attacks may have been engineered or allowed in order to mobilize public opinion so as to expand US hegemony. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)