The Taliban fled for the hills. Bin Laden, it seemed, would be cornered. Indeed, on Dec. 15, CIA operatives listening on a captured jihadist radio could hear bin Laden himself say "Forgive me" to his followers, pinned down in their mountain caves near Tora Bora...

As it happened, however, the hunt for bin Laden was unraveling on the very same day. As recalled by Gary Berntsen, the CIA officer in charge of the covert team working with the Northern Alliance, code-named Jawbreaker, the military refused his pleas for 800 Army Rangers to cut off bin Laden's escape...

Frustrated, Crumpton went to the White House and rolled out maps of the Pakistani-Afghan border on a small conference table. President Bush wanted to know if the Pakistanis could sweep up Al Qaeda on the other side. "No, sir," Crumpton responded. (Vice President Dick Cheney did not say a word, Crumpton recalled.) The meeting was inconclusive...

To catch bin Laden, the CIA was left to lean on local tribesmen, a slender reed. NEWSWEEK recently interviewed two of the three tribal chiefs involved in the operation, Hajji Zahir and Hajji Zaman. They claimed that the CIA overly relied on the third chieftain, Hazrat Ali--and that Ali was paid off (to the tune of $6 million) by Al Qaeda to let bin Laden slip away...

No impressed with Franks thinking. Yes the Soviest (and the Brits before them) got bogged down in Afghanistan. They were trying to conquer, we were just trying to nab one guy. We weren't trying to hold any territory. Maybe we would have failed anyway, but it was worth the try and more defensible than trying to prove who has the biggest ... by invading Iraq.

Yep, the intel was that finely tuned: Iraqi guy. al Quaeda guy. Cuppa joe. Prague. 15-30 mins. Check please.

But this microscopically tuned  global trackers uddenly became blind as a mole and dumb as a block of wood for everything else: Osama ... thousands of tons of WMDs ... pallets with billions of dollars of reconstruction money ...

If the biggest boogeyman can be caught, the billions of little boogeymen who are just itching to swarm the beaches, overrun the land, kill everyone in their beds, and replace the constitution with Sharia Law, as soon as they smarten up enough to buy explosives to blow up an airport before they're arrested on the word of a paid FBI collaborating infiltrator. If they can get the pizza store to deliver a map of the airport. And there's hordes of 'em. Billions. Just ask AC.

But never fear. Rudy Ghouliani will save the world. Have faith.

When Rudy's president every day will be 9/11. Jeezus! It'll be better than being raptured!

www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com

The overwhelming majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.  Yet the Bush administration refused to lift a finger against them.  Now, the overwhelming majority of the suicide bombers attacking our troops in Iraq are Saudi nationals.

Well I think they succeeded in providing an unforgettable lesson in American power but not in the way that they had intended.  The Iraq fiasco showed that there are limits to military power even when your country is the world's only military superpower.  This was a lesson that Bush and his conservative friends never learned from Vietnam and apparently still haven't learned.  An unforgettable lesson in American power.  Think about it.  All the deaths and casualties.  It was all about a fireworks show.

"every now and again the United States has to pick up a crappy little country and throw it against a wall just to prove we are serious."

The admin thought that after 12 years of santions, and years more of U.S. oil embargo, Iraq = Grenada, ripe for rolling over. In addition, we would get bases that we gave up when we nominally left Saudi Arabia, get more oil, and 'teach those brownies a lesson they wouldn't forget.'

As it is they don't criticize Bush/Cheney/Rice a single word for this blunder.  

Bush had 90% approval ratings immediately after 9/11 to go after Osama and co.  That means most of us supported him in that time for that purpose.  THe WORLD supported us.  He failed miserably at his true mandate and gave the general public a "bait and switch" into Iraq.

As for your new round file rule,

Why do you think it is new, or a round file? In fact it is quite old and square. You assume and you assume and assume and assume....

And I do wish you would quit attacking Clinton for his private acts..

Second, personally I don't accept the talk about "It's bad; it's going to come." It's an attempt to hedge their bets. "We know nothing, but to sound well prepared let's say that it's coming" sort of saying. If we are so knowledgeable, how come not even a single Al Qaida operative was caught in the US; there should be several of those.

That said and done
It's been so much fun
Pretending your reach
Extends to the sky,
When we really know
You withered long ago
In a cave with a leak
You did already die.

But damn if your ratings
Don't help with our matings
Our malevolent coupling
Of fear, greed and lies.

Bin Laden understands what an invaluable resource these types of symbolic attacks represent in the kind of terror war he has undertaken.  He and the Islamic fundamentalists at the head of this movement can continually point to the enormous hole which still resides in the heart of Manhattan that they are responsible for.  That crater is an invaluable tool for recruitment and indoctrination of a new generation into the holy war.

It won't be an easy thing, topping such a massive attack, perhaps impossible on the symbolic level, but I believe that bin Laden's philosophical approach to this war is undeniably sound, and Al Qaeda is planning a similarly grand strike sometime soon, though on their timetable, soon may be 10-20 years down the road from the last attack, a time period which is approaching all too quickly.

Washington, DC would always be a good place to expect such an attack, but if I put myself in the mind of the jihadist planners, I would concentrate the next effort away from the East Coast, where the greatest awareness and preparation for possible terrorist attack has been undertaken.

I think the most effective and accessible targets are now to be found on the West Coast of the United States, California and the surrounding states which represent the true economic heart of America on the Pacific rim. The target should be something which is relatively recognizable around the world, or a structure whose destruction will have a pervasive impact on the economy of the region, preferably both.

Bridges and dams immediately come to mind, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Grand Coulee Dam seem to present some of the most opportune targets.  Dams are exceptionally vulnerable, and anyone with a structural engineering degree and a working knowledge of explosives could easily come up with a plan for damaging such a structure in a manner which would bring about its collapse, with just a little help from Mother nature.  There would be immediate massive destruction, and long-term ramifications for the entire surrounding region.  This type of attack would create an indelible scar similar to the one in New York, and the loss of infrastructure, something like 6180 MW of power generation, would blackout many of the towns and cities in the US and Canada for an extended period. It would also have a catastrophic effect on the region's agriculture since the dam provides water to irrigate a half a million acres in eastern Washington

An attack on San Francisco's iconic bridge would be more difficult, but properly planned and executed, perhaps with fuel fertilizer bombs on semi trailers at both ends of the bridge, could knock out the bridge as a working structure for several years at least.  Add some fissile nuclear waste to such an attack, and you could irradiate the bridge and surrounding area rendering it unusable for generations perhaps.