The 9/11 Intelligence Snafu: I

The 9/11 Intelligence Snafu: I didn’t want to give people the wrong impression when I slammed that last story. The idea that Bush should have known about 9/11 because an intelligence agent let him know that “terrorists might hijack a plane” is ridiculous.

That being said, 9/11 would never have happened without numerous government screw-ups. The CIA should have had people inside of al-Queda who could have warned them of what was coming. The FAA should have banned knives and boxcutters from planes before 9/11. If the INS would have been doing it’s job half the hijackers probably wouldn’t have been in the country when September, 2001 rolled around. If we had our act together and had a national database that was shared amongst law enforcement agencies we also could have at least snared Mohamed Atta and even that could have scuttled the whole thing.

There are a variety of excuses as to why these things weren’t corrected before 9/11 and a few of them have some validity to them. However, we no longer have any excuses. We need to address the mistakes these agencies are making so we can stop as many terrorist attacks aimed at us as possible. Even though it pains me to say it, it’s unreasonable to expect a 100% success rate. But, there’s no way something as elaborate as 9/11 should have slid under the radar screen. We paid a terrible price for our government’s failure to be prepared and had better learn something from it.

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