Had Bush&Co. been at and paid attention, they could have-should have been stopped dead 9-11. How is it that the boxcutter-wielding, hijackers' photos...none Iraqi's, the majority from Saudi Arabia... were posted on a website, with lightning speed? Reminiscent of having headline stories already written and ready to go at a moment's notice, as in the case of some headline-making story breaking.....
How they slipped by and were able to invade our heavily surveilled air space, especially that surrounding the Pentagon, defies any reasonable...or even unreasonable...explanation. (Side note: And isn't it a curiosity to this day that, amidst the tons of rubble, someone just happened to stumble across Atta's pbuttport?)
It's not as though "concerned parties" weren't warned nor, as Rice incredulously commented "No one could have imagined...". Why did interceptors stand down? What was the significance of the "alert-react" training being staged on the very same day?
How could it realistically be that "concerned parties" were caught offguard and unaware? Inexcusable and negligent come to mind.
What ever is it that makes anyone believe Homeland Security would be of any use, under the same or similar circumstances?
Fighting them there is no deterrent, contrary to what Bush and Cheney are fond of proclaiming. And "fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here" is totally at odds with their other proclamation: "It's not a matter of if....but when." Fence-straddling? Flip-flopping? Which is it?
Could there have been a worse, more questionable strategy-production than diverting from unfinished business in Afghanistan (where the general-in-charge directed the theater from MAFB and ultimately flubbed the Tora Bora-binLaden scenario) and going on to put in harm's way and tie up 150,000 troops in Iraq? The third act that followed the "Shock and Awe" extravaganza has evolved into an almost 3-year "run"...despite bad reviews.
To those who erroneously insist that Bush never said it would be over with (relatively) quickly and we were in it for the long haul, his reference in that context was to the neverending, perpetual "war on terror"...not the Iraq adventure (remember "Mission Accomplished"?). Iraq regime change ala Bush&Co. went very wrong and very far afield from any previous agreement or declarations concerning Middle Eastern-Iraq foreign policy. Miscalculations due to stubborness, arrogance and a self-serving agenda. Refusal to listen to any voices other than their own, as to post-war planning and predicted consequences of an inadequate number of troops.
Iran, the Sequel? Unloosely based on the same premise?
As a criminal case, and if the sequence of events and players were laid out, diagram style as is often done in police work, the dot connecting would undoubtedly resolve dozens of yet-to-be-answered questions.
