Outside Counsel

Teresa Nielsen Hayden nails it: "Naturally, George doesn't want people remembering that Osama bin Laden was the actual author of the 9/11 terrorism. His first-term agenda called for picking a fight with Saddam Hussein, not bin Laden. That way George could one-up his dad, chalk up an easy victory (Bush & Co. really did expect that), possibly use Iraq's resources to help defray the cost of the war, and get himself re-elected. Meanwhile, with everyone distracted by the war, he'd loot the national economy on behalf of his rich backers. Then some little Saudi radical had to make trouble by taking out the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon. It was too blatant. George had to do the war-with-Afghanistan thing instead. But as early as he possibly could, he transferred all the emphasis to drumming up the war with Iraq. That's why there was no provision made for the post-war reconstruction of Afghanistan that would have made the war there worth something. The war with Afghanistan was never part of the plan in the first place. Bush & Co. simply weren't interested in pursuing it. It's also why Cheney's attention was already focused on pinning the attacks on Saddam Hussein by the afternoon of 9/11, long before the administration had answered questions like "what is going on," "are there any more people alive under that rubble," "what's needed here", or even "how are all those stranded people going to get home from the Maritimes." 9/11 was a crisis only insofar as it had interrupted their agenda, and Cheney was trying to push things back on track. And it's also why Bush & Co., especially Rumsfeld, repeatedly and personally (and by all reports very uncivilly) insisted on overruling the Pentagon planners who told them how many troops and what kind of backup were going to be needed for the invasion." Read all of it.