What Bush could have done: "As we know, when Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, et al finally came up with the priorities for their new administration, al-Qaeda had been replaced by tax cuts for Bush's rich donors on the 'A' list, and didn't even appear on the 'B' list. Thus came 9/11, despite warnings given to the President on August 6, 2001 that in the immediate future al-Qaeda intended to hijack commercial planes and use them to attack east coast targets. (Bush apparently took the warnings seriously - Ashcroft immediately stopped flying on commercial aircraft, and Bush moved to Texas for the longest vacation in the history of the American presidency...and even when that was over, he preferred Florida to target-listed Washington, D.C.)

"In the days after the 9/11 attacks, America had the sympathy of the world, and the police and intelligence agencies of even normally hostile nations offered to help us track down and bring to justice its perpetrators. Mullah Omar of Afghanistan offered to arrest bin Laden on our behalf and turn him over to a western nation for prosecution; Moslems all over the world were horrified at the actions of one of their own, a fundamentalist turned criminal and murderer. It would have been so easy to accept Omar's offer, bring in bin Laden, dismantle the training camps and track down their attendees and sponsors, and launch an international effort to disassemble and render impotent al-Qaeda. It probably could have been done in a year or less, given the intensity of the worldwide empathy for citizens of America and the many other nations whose people died in the World Trade Center. Over 500 American soldiers would still be alive, and thousands would not have lost arms, legs, and eyes. Over 40,000 innocent Afghans and Iraqis would still be alive."

What Bush could have done: "As we know, when Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, et al finally came up with the priorities for their new administration, al-Qaeda had been replaced by tax cuts for Bush's rich donors on the 'A' list, and didn't even appear on the 'B' list. Thus came 9/11, despite warnings given to the President on August 6, 2001 that in the immediate future al-Qaeda intended to hijack commercial planes and use them to attack east coast targets. (Bush apparently took the warnings seriously - Ashcroft immediately stopped flying on commercial aircraft, and Bush moved to Texas for the longest vacation in the history of the American presidency...and even when that was over, he preferred Florida to target-listed Washington, D.C.)

"In the days after the 9/11 attacks, America had the sympathy of the world, and the police and intelligence agencies of even normally hostile nations offered to help us track down and bring to justice its perpetrators. Mullah Omar of Afghanistan offered to arrest bin Laden on our behalf and turn him over to a western nation for prosecution; Moslems all over the world were horrified at the actions of one of their own, a fundamentalist turned criminal and murderer. It would have been so easy to accept Omar's offer, bring in bin Laden, dismantle the training camps and track down their attendees and sponsors, and launch an international effort to disassemble and render impotent al-Qaeda. It probably could have been done in a year or less, given the intensity of the worldwide empathy for citizens of America and the many other nations whose people died in the World Trade Center. Over 500 American soldiers would still be alive, and thousands would not have lost arms, legs, and eyes. Over 40,000 innocent Afghans and Iraqis would still be alive."