Do you really want to go there?
There is very little talk about whether 9/11 could have been prevented now or then. The President used 9/11 to circle the wagons and give him a reason for being President which his team took maximum advantage of. They skillfully kept the topic away from their own blame in letting the attack succeed in the first place and the public let itself be led away from the smoke.
There has been very little talk about whether 9/11 happened BECAUSE of President Bush, whether his team dropped the ball and failed to catch the terrorists when they could and should have. What we know from Richard Clarke and others is that the Bushies hated Clinton so much, they didnt want anything to do with ANY of their policies, including terrorism. After all, we have never had a foreign terrorist attack on US soil so that was hardly a priority for them. (At the time, Cheney's priority was his secret energy policy committee with Enron and others.) Mr Clark tried many times to brief President Bush (like he briefed Clinton) and was repeatedly turned away by his boss, Condi Rice.
I think there is a very good argument to be made that 9/11 happened because of Bush's failure to protect us. If they try to use 9/11 to justify their secret wire taps, I hope this issue comes up to haunt them like it haunts me.
Having said this, Im curious how much mileage they will get from this defense. The issue here isn't wiretaps but wiretaps without a warrant or any oversight. The idea of unrestrained government power should concern the Republican base as much as the Democrats.
Wiretap Program Could Have Foiled 9/11, Hayden Says
January 24, 2006
WASHINGTON -- The country's No. 2 spymaster said the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. could have been prevented if the Bush administration had in place a domestic surveillance system that has been criticized by civil libertarians and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
The comments by Gen. Michael V. Hayden yesterday were an early salvo in an effort by the White House to turn the controversy surrounding a National Security Agency wiretapping program into a political advantage for President Bush. Mr. Bush himself listed the NSA surveillance operations yesterday as among the crucial tools his administration has used to prevent a repeat attack by al Qaeda since 2001.
