LAT: Missed Opportunities Shadow 9/11 Attacks [View All]

[RamboLiberal]

Last week's hearings on the Sept. 11 attacks were like rewinding a movie with a hauntingly tragic ending. Again and again, commissioners backed up the tape and hit pause at critical passages, always with a single question in mind: If this sequence or that had taken an alternate turn, could the ending have been different?

And although almost every high-powered witness called before the Sept. 11 commission said they did not think so, the hearings brought years of U.S. counterterrorism efforts into a sharper focus that suggested a more complicated answer.

Testimony detailed unfulfilled efforts and opportunities to kill Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden; to launch Predator aircraft into the skies of Afghanistan; and, in the final months before the attacks, to mobilize intelligence across the federal government in an urgent search for clues.

Each episode was a turning point in the war on terrorism before many Americans even knew there was such a war. Each was an opportunity to deliver a blow to Al Qaeda or roll up cells whose intentions were unclear. In hindsight, they also represented chances to bump the Sept. 11 plot off its course.