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Before 9/11, the phrases 'suicide hijacking' and 'credible threat' weren't associated in *anybody's* mind. Hijacking meant traditional hijacking, with hostages and demands and so forth. Suicide hijacking may have been thought about, but not seriously; it had *never* been done before. Just because we've all gotten used to the idea now, let's not forget the way the world was pre-9/11.
"For an intelligence agency with a near-unlimited budget and person power, it wouldn't seem that hard to put two and two together on this one."
Yes, it is. Let's not forget, the FBI also has near-unlimited leads. I'm sure somebody *did* put two and two together, but ranked the resulting threat as rather low. It's a big world out there, and there are LOTS of ways to attack us. Again, suicide hijackings were unheard of. We'd expect terrorists to stick to what they know works.
"Besides being rather callous towards the nearly 5,000 people who lost their lives, this excuse is just plain ridiculous."
It is? Why? Because events LATER proved them wrong? That's absurd. I once hit a bird with my car. Was I callous for driving down a remote country road? Birds have always flown *away* when cars approach, in my experience. Why should I have expected one to dive into my grill?
Terrorists used hijackings as leverage, not to gain offensive weapons. Why should we have placed such a high likelyhood on that changing? And how could we have known when or where?
"Finally, the public should be informed as to why it took more than eight months after this attack before this information became publicly available."
And strange as it may sound for a liberal-minded guy, who voted against Bush and continues to see him as as large a threat to American freedom as any terrorists, I don't fault him for not bringing it up sooner. The country was in shock, and scared. It's the president's responsibility to provide clear direction in a crisis. When you're in a leadership position and a crisis develops, sometimes you have to take a stand and stick to it, even if that stand involves some impropriety. Now that things have cooled down a bit, they are making these things known. If there was truly some impropriety, then we will be able to deal with it at our leisure. I have no problem with that at all.
"this nation lost 3,000 citizens, the "crown jewels" of the Manhattan skyline, our sense of security, and precious civil liberties, not to mention unleashing a vicious war against Afghanistan while the Bush team knew that the acts creating the entire mess were on the way."
So they're saying that Bush knew about the hijackings, when they would take place, how they would take place, and set up a plan whereby he could destroy the WTC, kill a bunch of Americans, destroy our civili liberties, and send our soldiers off to get killed... for the pure fun of it? Talk about absurd.
Hindsight is always 20/20. Foresight is a much more difficult. Even to my Bush-disliking, liberal viewpoint, the claims that Bush 'should have known better' sound like simple political mudslinging. I don't buy it, and it just makes the attackers (democrats in Congress) look bad.
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