Our pal Raymond Ibrahim reviews Al Qaeda in Its Own Words, edited by Gilles Kepel and Jean-Pierre Milelli, over at the [1] Middle East Quarterly:

Al Qaeda in Its Own Words provides the translated writings of four jihadis--Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, and Abu Musab Zarqawi. Edited by five people with Kepel, a French sociologist of Islam, as lead editor, it contains a wealth of data that, unfortunately, is presented in a rather confused manner.

The actual words of Al-Qaeda are rarely analyzed or placed in context. Obvious contradictions--such as Al-Qaeda's constant protestations to Americans that its war on them is a response to and derives from U.S. foreign policy while telling Muslims that the jihad must persevere until the globe is governed according to Islamic law--are ignored.

Where objective analysis is wanting, apologetics and hackneyed psychoanalyses predominate: Thus, the "neocons" are akin to Al-Qaeda since "the dual undertakings of 9/11 and the American attack on Iraq ... mirrored each other"; bin Laden--that "nervous, flaccid, eternal adolescent"--opted for a life of jihad due to his "devouring" need for "recognition"; whereas Islamists such as Sayyid Qutb and Ayman al-Zawahiri chose jihad due to the "trauma" and "humiliation" they underwent in Egyptian prisons....

[2] Read it all.