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On the Republican side :
I don't think that they deliberately sat on something so as to let it happen.
I remain disgusted with their inability to own up to any part of the truth, e.g. Ari Fleischer "There were no warnings.", and Cheney's calling the questioners disloyal.
Despite convener's arguments, I believe that the idea of planes as missiles wasn't strongly considered on September 10th. Should it have been? Probably, but anti-terrorism is, by definition, defence.
On the Democrat side :
Disgust at Hillary Clinton. Calls for an enquiry into the matter - "I think these questions have to be raised." They are, by the Senate Intelligence Committee. But that just isn't high-profile enough. They are clearly acting for their own political interests, and it's just about as despicable as Bush blaming the problem on Clinton.
On the Intelligence community side :
Herein the problem lay. The lack of communication between agencies, and the inability to coalesce data seems to be the cause of the problem.
To put it into perspective, for all of the information that they might have had, they would still have had difficulty stopping the terrorists - if not with that plot, then with another. There were memos stating that September 11th, or something like that, was going to happen, but how many other memos are out there saying that some other attack was going to happen, but didn't? It seems like the old 'selective memory' trick.
While it makes sense to investigate these matters, lay off the bloodhounds. It demeans all sides.
Mike
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