AND THE REASON...ONCE AGAIN..

"What is the motivation?" she asked. "We never hear what you find out on why."

Mr. Brennan's reply: "Al-Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton slaughter of innocents. ... They attract individuals like Mr. [Umar Farouk] Abdulmutallab and use them for these types of attacks. He was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has perverted Islam, and has corrupted the concept of Islam, so that he's [sic] able to attract these individuals. But al-Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and death."



"The time has come for you," said the purported voice of Mr. bin Laden,

• "to liberate yourself from fear and the ideological terrorism of neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby;

• the reason for our dispute with you is your support for your ally, Israel, occupying our land in Palestine."

• They included America's support of Israel in its subordination of the Palestinians and

• its attacks on Lebanon;

• the propping up of pro-American kleptocracies in Muslim lands; and

• the presence of U.S. forces on the "sacred soil" of Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War.

The American people should be given enough credit by its leaders to be told the truth about why we are in this "long war" with Islamic extremists, a war that is hastening our bankruptcy, just as Osama bin Laden dreamed it would.

We proclaim our innate goodness, our pure motives, while decrying "terrorism" and never conceding that to the bulk of the world's Muslims, the greatest terrorism is the destruction of Iraq, a war we started that has seen the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the displacement of more than 4.5 million from their homes. To them, understandably, the bombings from American drones, now killing Afghans and Pakistanis by remote control, are acts of terror. To them, the plight of the Palestinians under siege in Gaza is the result of American-supported Israeli terrorism. This is widely understood around the world, except for the purposefully misled American public.