How then are we to explain the Bush Administration inaction before 9/11, and its willingness to take full advantage of this “new Pearl Harbor?” I don’t know, but that doesn’t keep me from speculating. So here’s my hunch – and it’s only a hunch which I am willing to revise or abandon if and when more evidence appears. The Busheviks were forewarned (“Bin Laden determined to strike in the US”), but they expected attacks on the scale of the USS Cole and the African embassies: perhaps a few dozen casualties -- "acceptable." They did not take countermeasures because they saw a strategic advantage in such a “mini-Pearl Harbor.” For such a purpose, the attack on The Pentagon would suffice. They did not expect the destruction of the World Trade Center. However, after 9/11 the die was cast, and so they eagerly launched their “war on terror," along with the policy outrages that were to follow: the USA PATRIOT ACT, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo. The Iraq War, we now know from Richard Clarke and the Downing Street memos, was on the drawing boards long before 9/11, awaiting just such an event to set it in motion.
Interesting and definitely worth a read.
