The Official 9/11 Investigation Report
I've yet to watch this video, but I have read the report. The US itself admits that there were enough signs ahead of time that were known by the government where something should have been prevented.
The problem is this: All of this information was spread amongst dozens of databases and hundreds (if not more) of officials, buried amidst mountains of other information.
A nation does not function like a human being. A person, if they saw all of those signs (and had the memory and time to remember them all...), would probably figure out what was going on and been able to do something. But an entire nation taking any critical action like 'shoot those planes down' or 'on this day don't let X, Y, Z passengers board 1, 2, 3 planes' isn't easy to come to, it's what we call 'bureaucratic reaction delay'.
After class today I'll sit down and watch this video and tell ya what I think, but also remember this:
Vision in hindsight is always 20/20.
edit: as for the above posts on leaving Afghanistan for Iraq - umm it's called 'redeployment' and when you're changing from attacking a nation like Afghanistan (basically capture Kabul and one or two major cities and maintain light patrols of the mountains for victory) to attacking a nation like Iraq (clearly defended military borders, less rugged terrain, seperated objectives to capture and defend, split factions, organized (and much larger) military) you're obviously going to have to make a bigger deal out of the latter than the former.
also, there was more hype about 'why we're going into Iraq' because the initial rationale was not as crucial to 'the national interest' and suspect (still is) to much criticism. Hence the administration desired to beef up and defend their declared cause for war in Iraq. The fact that that war has also proved more costly, longer and it's initial 'motives' still called into question is why you hear about it more.
(I'm not defending the invasion of Iraq, that's for sure.)
9/11 ---> Al Qaida ---> Afghanistan (clear and easy path to follow)
9/11 ---> Al Qaida ---> Iraq? (not enough info to go to Iraq for that cause)
9/11 ---> Heightened sense of paranoia/fear of external threats ---> Saddam Hussein/organized and sometiems secretive military ----> Iraq
(NOW we're talking about a 'rational' thought process. I put rational in quotes because 'heightened sensitivity to external threats' is subjective, while purely rational and logical processes only include objective reasoning. I personally feel it was an overreaction, and a costly one at that...)
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