9-11 5 years later

As Richard Clarke and the 9/11 commission make clear [ I've been reading the graphic novel !!!] , the Clinton administration paid great heed to the issue of Islamic terror.

The most notable failure occurred under the Bush administration, the inability to prevent the 9/11 attacks -not unrelated to the new administration's lack of focus on the threat and the dimunition of Clarke and his counter-terror group.

Consider the following:
BUSH: Well those are two different questions, did we fight the wrong war, and absolutely � I have no doubt � the war came to our shores, remember that. We had a foreign policy that basically said, let�s hope calm works. And we were attacked.

Can we not take the above quote as an admission that Bush did not see a real terror threat before 9-11???

We had a foreign policy that basically said, let�s hope calm works. And we were attacked.

This is consistent with Clarke's interpretation of the Bush Whitehouse approach to terrorism After 9/11 Clarke and his team regained much access and resources. Ron Suskind's new book details how the deliberate targeting of Al Queda operatives and operations resumed for a period after 9/11 with many notable successes.

However, the political and ideological payoff from such a war in the shadows was minimal and, before long, resources, time , and effort were focused on the goal of dislodging Saddam Hussein. Ironically, after a decade of efforts aimed at draining the capacity of Al Queda, the Iraq war proved just the shot in the arm that the network needed. Bush, Bin Laden's "indispensable ally," raised the profile of the Al Queda jihad exponentially, effectively replicating the Afghan war which begat Al Queda in the 1980s.