The Final 9/11 Commission Report

The September 11 commission's final report was chilling. Chairman Thomas Kean declared that neither Congress, the Clinton administration, nor the George W. Bush administration took the threat of al-Qaeda seriously enough to consider the possibility of Osama bin Laden's confederates striking in the U.S. Several incidents of lax security and bureaucratic bungling point to how easily the nineteen hijackers were able to overcome so many obstacles in pursuing their heinous plots.

The good news is that we are safer now than on September 10, 2001. The bad news is that more needs to be done - and fast. More will most likely be done, as the initial efforts from Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) demonstrate. As 9/11 commission member James Thompson stated, failure to prevent another attack will be the responsibility of the government, and the American people will demand accountability for it.

As for me, I don't know if 9/11 could have been prevented. Perhaps we could have stopped al-Qaeda from destroying the World Trade Center towers, but I think they eventually would have been destroyed regardless - because the terrorists were so dead set on bringing them down, I doubt they could have been stopped at all. As one President said, if someone was insistent on assassinating a leader, all the security in the world couldn't prevent it.

It was John F. Kennedy who said that - on the morning of November 22, 1963!