Perfect Soldiers by Terry McDermott

[noise]

Just finished reading this book.

1. Atta, Jarrah, and Shehhi were typical students.

2. Got involved in radical Islam.

3. Signed up with Al Qaeda. Got some basic military training.

4. Got some flight training.

5. Hijacked the planes and crashed them on 9/11.

Students motivated by radical Islam + a few months (up to a couple of years) of training = 9/11?

I read Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's testimony transcript when it was released during the Moussaoui trial. The military combat training consisted of killing goats. Are we to believe that the hijackers, after assimilating into US culture for months, had no hesitation when it came to murdering strangers on 9/11? My point is that the hijackers come across as amateurs in Perfect Soldiers. Moussaoui alone could have blown the whole thing if FBI headquarters had not interfered with the Minnesota branch office.


I find all these 9/11 authors' layers of accounts (patsies, terrorists (secular motive), martyrs (religious motive), state supported, Bin Laden supported, US intel assets, drug runners, etc.) extremely confusing.

[salvorhardin]

1. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were raised in the American culture. They seemed to have no problem killing their own peers.

So were Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. They had no problem murdering strangers.

There were 16,692 murders committed in the United States in 2005. Almost all of them by people completely raised within the U.S. culture. Yet somehow they found their way to killing. (Source: http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm)

So why would you have trouble believing that just because the hijackers had assimilated into American culture they would have any problem with killing?

[noise]

2. Good point.

I wonder about the concept of "perfect soldiers." Unlike a suicide truck bombing, 9/11 required months of waiting. Would amateurs motivated by religious belief second guess themselves?