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THIS book explores how the fortunes and public policies of President George W Bush, his father and their associates are connected with members of the Saudi royal family, writes GEOFF SIMONS.
Craig Unger suggests that the decades-long relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia helped to fuel the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and its resort to terrorism throughout the world.
There is particular focus on the relationship between the current Bush administration and the bin Laden family, which is thought to be connected in various ways to terrorist outrages.
Unger offers abundant documentation, but his semi-journalistic style is sometimes loose and less than scholarly.
Keen to show that various members of the bin Laden family, in addition to Osama, have been linked to Islamic fundamentalism, Unger resorts to innuendo and vagueness.
Despite such occasional lapses, Unger does succeed in establishing various points that cannot be enjoyable reading for the Bush family.
Saudi royals have invested in US corporations that have funded the Republican Party.
Some 140 Saudis were allowed to fly out of the US immediately after the events of September 11 2001, even though much of the US was closed down.
Why was this allowed to happen? Whom was the Bush administration protecting and why?
It is suggested that at least £1.47 billion in investments and contracts had been channelled from the Saudis to the Bushes in deals with many US companies even before George W grabbed the presidency.
Such revelations are deeply significant, relating as they do to the wars against Iraq, the supposed war against terror and the layers of corruption at the heart of the US and Saudi establishments.
It is useful to see, again, the Colin Powell comment in February 2001 that the sanctions against Saddam had worked and that Iraq had no WMD. "He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours."
Corruption, corporate vested interest, political deceit, hidden agendas and the global derelictions of state dynastics - a spectrum of familiar but depressing facts.
Star readers will be less than amazed at this sort of material, but Unger, essentially a journalist with access to major players in the political arena, has done well to bring it all together.
GEOFF SIMONS