The Commission made several major recommendations and one of the most important ones is complete overhauling of the Intelligence Agencies and the system of operation. It asked for the creation of a cabinet level post responsible for all Intelligence Agencies, which has already met with some opposition from the Intelligence Agencies themselves as they would surely lose the independence of dealing with various types of intelligences gathered by them independently. But the Commission's recommendation seems valid as this is precisely the area which has been responsible for all the major problems including failure regarding 9/11 and feeding faulty information on non-conventional weapons including WMD in Iraq, which led to the disastrous unilateral attack against a sovereign country -- Iraq.

Though the Commission corrected the record on September 11 "in great detail" (ref. NYT headlines on July 25, 04), it did not question the ability of the hijackers who had practically no direct training on highly sophisticated equipment like the wide-bodied aircraft to pilot them with so high precision to hit the correct levels of the NY WTC towers and also hit the Pentagon practically at a ground level. Such perfect handling of the aircraft could not be possible with some ones having some training in small light aircraft. This seemed to be the case with practically all the hijackers who reportedly had some training in some small aircraft.

Moreover, there were no queries on what happened to the captains and other pilots and engineers who were sitting in the cockpits in very secure positions. Were they all killed and removed? If so, there might have been serious fights in the cockpits that would have tilted the aircraft, thus veering them off the planned routes and alarming ground controllers below. Such disastrous events were likely happening in the cockpits and how is it that the cabin crew and indeed the passengers were not doing anything! There was reportedly an announcement from one hijacker asking for calm as they were going for safe landing -- could this be enough? This part of the story apparently remained unexplored as the Commission's report in shorter form that came out in the newspapers did not mention anything on this issue.

Another issue that many talked about was the role of Israeli Mossad. This is an Intelligence Agency which keeps all information about practically everything that happens around the world and undoubtedly everything around Middle East and America. Did it play any role? Did it have any clue about all these and report the same to any of the Intelligence Agencies of the USA? If the British Intelligence was involved, the likely role of Mossad cannot be ruled out. What happened to the reported planned visit of Ariel Sharon to New York on the same day? Even if these are rumors, they need to be looked into and correct facts be brought out to remove all doubts. Anyway, under the circumstances these appear to be valid questions as there are doubts in the minds of many when people speak only of Arabs and Muslims around this extremely sad event. Many also go to the extent of saying that Israelis wanted this sort of disaster to happen in order to create a permanent enmity between Christians and Muslims. Israelis have already been having problems with the Arabs and also with some Muslim countries; so why not create something that would extend this dangerous disease to other people of Faith. These are legitimate doubts and need to be addressed as 9/11 has virtually divided the world along the line of Muslims and Americans who are predominantly Christians.

Luckily, the Europeans carefully avoided this aspect of the problem and did not show any signs of division among the people of Faith. The only casualty seems to be the Americans and that reminds people of what Henry Ford-1 said about the role of Jews in his book The International Jews (introduced by Gerald Smith) based on Henry Ford's articles that used to be published in 1940s in Ford's journal The Dearborn Independent.

Indeed, 9/11Commission's report has in a way recognised this problem, regardless of whether Israelis have any role or not and rightly called for 'broad rethinking of American foreign policy towards Arabs and Muslim world' and indeed suggested 'a preventive strategy that is as much or more political as it is military and particularly asked for reshaping America's "approach to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia."

While talking about "strategies", the Commission asked for 'ensuring' that terrorist groups cannot find sanctuary in the "least governed, most lawless places in the world." The Commission's list included Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, West Africa, South-East Asia, 'particularly hard-to-police islands of the Philippines and Indonesia.' It also said very correctly that "we should offer an example of moral leadership in the world". But the Commission's report remained practically silent on the American invasion of a sovereign country, Iraq, grounded on faulty intelligence reports and the wrong decision to invade Iraq without UN approval. Such an invasion does not show any example of "moral leadership". One does not know how this is different from what Saddam did when he invaded Kuwait. The invasion of Iraq was a clear violation of the UN Charter.

The toppling of Saddam, a brutal dictator to his people but not to the Americans, has not made America and the rest of the world safer. Only Bush, Blair, Cheney, Rumsfeld may say so to justify invasion, but does the rest of the world agree? Obviously not. Saddam was not and could never be a threat to America; he could at best be a nuisance to Israel. Bob Woodward in his latest book -- The Plan of Attack -- did indicate the motive of Rumsfeld along Israeli line though the state of Israel was not specifically mentioned. Therefore, it was not America that was under threat; it was the Israeli lobby that led the Administration to believe that.

The Commission also rightly talked about "global strategy" against terrorism. The war against terrorism was already on with the dismantling of the Taliban regime and that was with the support of the rest of the world. But the strategy got misdirected with the invasion of Iraq on wrong pretext without UN support. This has made America vulnerable to any attack as predicted by the Commission itself. Now the leadership of Democratic Party is also blaming the present rightist Bush Administration for making America less safe. The majority of the common people of Arab world have gone against the Americans. It was not so before. Former President Clinton worked hard to have some breakthrough before he left but did not succeed. However, his work remained and that could be a base for further work towards peace.

Unfortunately, Iraq invasion and consequent American occupation of Iraq have created new dimensions in terms of terrorism. Now both Israelis and Americans are the occupiers and any fight to drive out the occupiers should normally be the legitimate fight and should not be considered as terrorism. In fact, President Bush himself reportedly said that he would not tolerate occupation of America by any power. If this is so, why should the resistance fighters in Iraq or Palestine be treated as terrorists? This is why there is an urgent need for the correct definition of terrorism from the world body -- the UNGA. Otherwise, the present dangerous threat of clashes between religions and cultures would engulf the whole world and it will not be possible to identify the real terrorists from the legitimate resistance forces fighting occupations around the world.

America must also change its policies on terrorism. Israeli view is that there can be no negotiations with "terrorists". The people, however, do not agree with Israeli definition of terrorists. If they are only fighting the occupation, they are the resistance forces and not terrorists. So negotiation is in order. This is what America did during Democrat's Administrations. However, if one is a real terrorist, he is undoubtedly an enemy to the society. But a man is not a born terrorist. There are reasons that make one a terrorist. Why has a billionaire Osama Bin Laden, a member of Bin Laden Family which has been the close friend of Bush family (ref Fahrenheit 9/11 documentary film) become a terrorist? Good or bad, he must have had his reasons and unfortunately his groups are capable of bringing devastation like 9/11. If one is determined to give his life for anything, it is virtually impossible to stop such a man.

Bin Laden reportedly asked for withdrawal of American forces from his country as he was earlier used by the Americans in order to drive out Soviets from Afghanistan. Whether this could have been done by America is a different matter. As this was not done, he went ahead to fight it out. This is the general impression that the people have about him. Now the situation has become such that Americans would ultimately be out of his country but this is being done at a great cost -- after all these disasters. Thus one feels that at a point one has to negotiate even with an enemy, if it comes to saving lives, restoring democracy and above all maintaining the correct social and political order. And here comes the "strategy" and the "moral leadership" that the 9/11 Commission discussed with great emphasis. It's high time to initiate these and one expects changes in the right direction with regime change in Washington.

Muslehuddin Ahmad is a former Secretary, Ambassador and Founder Vice Chancellors of North South University and Presidency University.