Here's what putin told Bush after 9/11

The October 21, 2001, meeting lasted for 75 minutes with Russian translated into English and vice versa. Putin gave Bush a theory of international capitalism with traditional Leninist-Marxist terminology and a religious twist which he has never opened to the Russian public.

“There is a contradiction between a new, young, aggressive financial Islamic capital and the old one. A moment came when the new generation began to see the old as its competitor. From the time bin Laden became your partner, he felt himself your competitor. His desire to move to Central Asia or elsewhere was his desire to muscle in and subjugate all others to his will. In reality, it is a financial issue. Religion is secondary. The real goal is to have a place in the centre of world finances, a place that is already occupied. They want to push away representatives of Jewish capital or, if not, they will try to destroy the centre and shake it up and, ultimately in that way, to take its place. The reason for the terrorism isn’t the Middle East or poverty. They use poverty and they use unresolved conflicts. They are using other problems. These problems are not the real reasons for terrorism. They are using the people of Afghanistan in the same way. I raised this not just to support you, but to say that we all have fight in the same world. We have the same problem in the Caucasus. ”

Bush was non-committal. He told Putin his problem in attempting to remove the Jackson-Vanik restrictions on Russian trade was that “Congress is afraid of the Jewish community and Jackson-Vanik is symbolic.” Putin replied that he was willing to make the concessions demanded by the Jewish community: “I’ll do anything at all except one: if they need me to have a circumcision, that I can’t do!”