U.S. journalists I don't think are very courageous. They tend to go along with the government's policy domestically and internationally. To question is seen as being unpatriotic, or potentially subversive.

A businessman admits that he 'let go' an employee because he was a Sunni Muslim. You simply have to look after yourself, he explains. I am shocked, like a good Westerner should be.

Colleagues will malign you if you're a moderately successful journalist.

Individuals in various countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia listen to the tapes of bin Laden. They gather in groups of four or five. They feel they want to do something to express their support for what they've heard. The idea that they were taking orders is a particularly Western idea.

I still wonder if the United States realizes how much planning went into this. When we talk about "mindless terrorists," we are lying to ourselves.

The violence stems from injustice, because people feel they have been treated unfairly in the Middle East, whether that means military occupation, starvation under U.N. sanctions, whether it means that they have a dictatorship imposed on them, propped up by the West. This is why people turn to violence, because they have no other avenue left.

It's very easy to start a war but the muftah, as the Arabs say, the key to switch off a war, is very difficult to find.