World Keeps Split Views on 9/11 Attacks

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/vie...on_9_11_attacks

September 22, 2008

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - European and African adults are more likely to believe that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda, while those living in the Middle East are decidedly more skeptical, according to a poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org. More than 70 per cent of respondents in Kenya and Nigeria, and more than half in Germany, France, Britain, Russia and Italy, believe al-Qaeda was behind the attacks.

In Egypt and Jordan, at least three-in-ten respondents believe Israel was involved in the 9/11 plot, while three-in-ten people in Turkey and Mexico suggest that the United States government was responsible for the event.

Al-Qaeda operatives hijacked and crashed four airplanes in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people. In July 2004, the federal commission that investigated the events of 9/11 concluded that "none of the measures adopted by the U.S. government from 1998 to 2001 disturbed or even delayed the progress of the al-Qaeda plot" and pointed out government failures of "imagination, policy, capabilities, and management."

Afghanistan has been the main battleground in the war on terrorism. In October 2001, U.S. president George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan, claiming that there would be "no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbour them." The conflict began after the Taliban regime refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

In August 2006, London’s Metropolitan Police Service announced that more than 20 people had been arrested in connection with an alleged terrorist plot. According to the authorities, a group planned to destroy airplanes flying from Britain to the U.S. by detonating bombs manufactured with materials that could be brought on board as part of a passenger’s carry-on luggage.

U.S. homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff said the plot "would have rivaled 9/11 in terms of the number of deaths and in terms of the impact on the international economy."