Book Review: "Crossing the Rubicon" by Michael C. Ruppert

Crossing the Rubicon is the ultimate conspiracy theory book. It makes a legal case that 9/11 was an inside job. Ruppert, a former LAPD narcotics investigator, divides the book into four parts: Motive, Means, Opportunity, and Empire and Decline. The book is long, over 600 pages, with 40 pages of endnotes, which he invites you to spot-check and see for yourself. I haven’t done that yet, but if just a fraction of what he says is true, then something is seriously wrong with our country. At the least, it should leave no doubt that the Bush administration was secretive, inconsistent, and incompetent in its handling of 9/11.

Among its claims:

• The world’s oil is about half gone.
• The CIA and Wall Street are one and the same.
• Afghan opium and Colombian cocaine profits are laundered to boost stock prices.
• The Bush and bin Laden families have a history of business dealings.
• Osama bin Laden was not estranged from his family, and is still a U.S. asset.
• Pakistan intelligence was a go-between for Bush and the terrorists.
• Virtually all terrorist (and citizen) actions can be tracked using computers and other technology.
• A U.S. spy in a Canadian jail predicted 9/11 in a sealed note his jailers opened after 9/11.
• The FBI repeatedly ignored warnings like the "20th hijacker" who didn’t care about learning to land.
• A lot of money was made when airline stocks plunged, but the media dropped the story.
• The two Senators who could stop the PATRIOT Act were the same ones who received anthrax letters.
• Almost an hour elapsed after the 2nd hijacking was confirmed and before the 3rd plane hit the Pentagon.
• Cheney was conducting war games on 9/11, diverting and confusing our air defenses.
  

On that last point, the book quotes an April 18 USA Today story "NORAD had drills of jets as weapons":

WASHINGTON — In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.

One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon — but that drill was not run after Defense officials said it was unrealistic, NORAD and Defense officials say.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-18-norad_x.htm

On April 13, Bush had said, "But there was a – nobody in our government, at least, and I don’t think the prior government, could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale."

While the book focuses on the alleged crimes of the Bush administration, it does not mean he supports Kerry, far from it. He questions Kerry’s prosecution of U.S. spy Bill Tyree, and criticizes his containment of some of the most damaging secrets of Iran-Contra. Ruppert speculates that Kerry, with his emphasis on bin Laden rather than Hussein, may be better positioned to expand the war to Saudi Arabia, which has even more oil than Iraq.

When describing the Democrat and Republican parties, he shares the analogy of two gangs in a crap game. They may fight each other viciously, but they close ranks when the cops come by, because they need to keep the game going. So the book doesn’t endorse anyone for President. He even includes a minor criticism of Nader. One thing is certain, however: The two establishment parties are not the answer.

I have a link to Ruppert’s site. Click "News" followed by "From the Wilderness."