About the same time I was slapping at mosquitoes in my backyard while reading about how record rainfalls would spawn unprecedented populations of the bug this summer, a birthday gift arrived for my daughter.
 
     She just turned 7, and a well-meaning family member sent her a book: Rachel: The Story of Rachel Carson by Amy Erhlich, published by Harcourt Books. The book is devoted to further advancing with children the iconography surrounding Rachel Carson, the woman who helped launch the modern environmental movement with her 1962 enviro-manifesto, Silent Spring.
 
     But what Erhlich doesn't tell you in Rachel is that as a direct result of Carson's largely successful push in that best-selling book to rid the earth of the pesticide DDT, hundreds of millions of people have contracted the mosquito-borne disease malaria, and tens of millions, mostly pregnant women and children in sub-Saharan Africa, have died of it. Worse, the disease continues to spread into new areas, and the Malaria Foundation International says it could even make a resurgence in the United States within a few years.
 
     I guess that information just wouldn't sit well on the halo that surrounds Carson. But here are the facts: "There has never been even one peer-reviewed, independently replicated study linking DDT exposure to any health problems in humans," explains Roger Bate, director of the Africa Fighting Malaria organization based in Washington, D.C.. "And given that since the 1940s easily more than a billion people the world over have been exposed to DDT, it should be pretty easy to come up with solid evidence of human harm if it existed," he said.
 
     Still, most Western governments, including the United States, banned DDT in the 1970s because of Carson's hysteria. And because DDT has become so politically radioactive, most Third World countries don't or can't use it anymore.
 
     DDT probably did cause some environmental harm when it was extensively used in agriculture in the 1950s and 1960s. Though that harm was shown to be reversible, it may have included things like thinnner egg shells in certain birds of prey.
 
     But, wow, what DDT did to help the human race. Spraying minuscule amounts of the pesticide in houses, hospitals and on mosquito breeding grounds was the primary reason that rates of malaria declined dramatically. There were 2.8 million cases of malaria in Sri Lanka in 1948, but because of DDT, there were 29 in 1963.
 
     Yet today, thanks to the work of Rachel Carson and her ilk, there are 300 million to 500 million maliara cases worldwide. Thousands of people die of the disease every day, and millions more experience the physical and economically debilitating aspects of it. And for what, so Western environmentalists can sleep better at night? These people may love humanity--but do they even like people?

     As Bate explains, DDT is the cheapest and most effective way to fight mosquitoes that carry malaria. Chemicals work by repelling, irritating, or killing the pests. When mosquitoes eventually build up a resistance to the poison aspect of DDT, they still remain repelled by it, which is why it is so effective. (Even more effective is rotating DDT use with other chemicals.) Nonetheless, DDT is just one huge weapon in fighting the spread of malaria--but a weapon that, thanks to Carson, has been largely removed from the world's arsenal.
 
     In any event, some African governments aren't putting up with the nonsense anymore. In 2000, South Africa started spraying tiny amounts of DDT in homes in its province with the most malaria cases, and rates of the disease dropped there by almost 90 percent, from a high of 60,000 a year. Sadly, other African countries would like to follow suit but can't do so on their own. They need funds from the World Health Organization or the U.S. Agency for International Development, and neither organization, though they know better, has the political guts to buck the international environmental lobby and allow funding for the spraying of DDT.
 
     So, what about that well-meaning friend and the Rachel book? Far from banning it from my daughter's reading list, we devoured every word together. It gave me a chance to explain one more environmentalist myth to my children.
 
     We'll mention that in the thank-you note.

      There is no chance of eliminating terrorism by Saudis unless Saudi Arabia uproots its educational establishment. That establishment continues to teach hatred of Westerners. This incitement is rooted in history. Dore Gold's new book, Hatred's Kingdom, utilizing previously unpublished documents, unmasks Saudi reality. The Saudi government has ceded control of religion and education to the fanatic Wahhabi sect. In return, the Wahhabis confer political legitimacy.
 
      Wahhabiism is a maverick Islamic creed of relatively recent origin. Ibn Abdul Wahhab, an 18th century preacher, condemned his opponents, including Muslims, as polytheists and advocated murder ("Kill those who ascribe partners to God, wheresoever you find them.").
 
      Wahhab struck a bargain with the first Saudi king under which, Gold writes, the rulers "would protect Ibn Abdul Wahhab and spread his new creed, if he would legitimize Saudi rule over an expanding circle of Bedouin tribes, which were subdued through jihad."
 
      In conquering one Arab city, Saudis "killed every woman, man and child they saw, cutting even the babies in cradles."
 
      King Ibn Saud (1880-1953) concentrated on exploiting oil. Subsequent kings have been his sons. In the 1950s, Arab nationalists sought to undermine the kingdom.
 
      King Faisal utilized Islam as a counterweight. By 1974, his Muslim World League had a budget of $50 million for Wahhabi indoctrination. Inside the kingdom, the Wahhabi educational establishment increased exponentially. In 1965, the kingdom had 3,625 university students. By 1986, the number reached 113,529. All are educated in Wahhabi hatred.
 
      Fanatics from Arab republics found refuge in Saudi Arabia and became missionaries. Secular education was denounced as "aggression against Islamic legitimacy."
 
      Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian, was sent to Pakistan, where he recruited Arabs with Saudi money, much of it from princes, to fight in Afghanistan. Azzam preached mass murder, "and the Jihad will remain an individual obligation until all of the lands which were formerly Muslim come back to us and Islam will reign within them once again." When Azzam was killed by a Russian bomb in 1989, he was succeeded by his student, Osama bin Laden, who converted his organization into al-Qaida.
 
      Bin Laden's followers murdered Americans in the 1990s. The Saudis denounced these attacks, but thwarted investigations and beheaded suspects before the FBI could interrogate them. Funding of fanatics by Saudi businessmen and royals continued. Gold shows that such funds were utilized by the 9/11 terrorists.

      In his book, Gold presents convincing evidence that, in 1996, the Saudis made a deal to pay "ransom" to bin Laden in exchange for his agreeing to conduct terrorism only outside the kingdom. Bin Laden was banned from Saudi Arabia, but extradition was not sought. In December 2002, the imam of the Saudi Defense Academy urged subjugation of Europe: "We will control the land of the Vatican; we will control Rome and introduce Islam in it.... The Christians will pay us poll tax, in humiliation, or they will convert to Islam." Saudis are educated in this kind of hatred.
 
      As former CIA Director James Woolsey said, "Much of the money for al-Qaida has come from Saudi Arabia. We would ultimately be better off with a democratic Saudi Arabia than we would with a ruling family that has done what this one has and bought off the Islamic extremists and terrorists by pointing them towards us. Saudis deserve a very large part of the blame for Sept. 11."
 
      I visited Saudi Arabia twice as a guest of the royal family. I concluded: (1) this anachronistic regime did not have a long-term future; but (2) immediate alternatives were unpalatable, i.e., Saddam Hussein, bin Laden or Iranians.
 
      The regional political climate changed with the defeat of Iraq, opening new opportunities as well as dangers. Crown Prince Abdullah has improved relations with Iran and given some help to the United States in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Reduction of American military presence in the kingdom is reciprocally beneficial. Mutual dependencies persist between the United States and Saudi Arabia.
 
      But terrorism will continue so long as Wahhabis teach hatred.
 
      Joel Sprayregen, a Chicago lawyer, writes and lectures about the Middle East.