In October of 2000, al-Qaeda managed to blow a 40 ft by 40 ft hole in the side of USS Cole while it was at port in Yemen. The terrorists were seeking a military confrontation with the United States, but the Cole bombing did not bring that result. Less than a year later, al-Qaeda operatives were positioning themselves inside the United States, preparing an attack of much larger scale. Al-Qaeda's plans were partially intercepted by US intelligence through the chatter of electronic intercepts. An al-Qaeda operative, referring to the failure of the Yemeni attack to produce the desired reaction, was overheard saying: "Don't worry; we're planning something so big now that the U.S. will have to respond…"

At the time, Judith Miller, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter then employed by New York Times, was working on an in-depth article about the al-Qaeda network. She says that during the weekend immediately preceding July 4th 2001 (two months before the 9/11 attacks) officials within the White House's Counter-terrorism Agency were trying to alert the president and other senior officials, but had decided to leak their concerns since they were being listened to.

CBS News reported, on July 26 2001, that the FBI had determined that the threat was serious enough to prompt enhanced security measures for certain officials. By August, the FBI knew that the pending attack would involve airplanes.

By early August 2001, the CIA had developed enough clarity about the threat to specifically warn the President. They titled their Presidential Daily Briefing for August 6, 2001 "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S" in the hope that the president would be concerned enough to energize the governmental agencies responsible for security and head off the attack. President Bush, who spent an estimated 42% of his first year vacationing in his ranch in Crawford, Texas, was not pleased by the in-person intrusion of the CIA agent who was sent to present the analysis. Bush glared at the CIA briefer and the snapped: "All right, you have covered your ass". When the agent cleared out, the President went back to fishing and working on a speech about the stem-cell research, putting the CIA's warning in the distant back of his mind. Source: Ron Suskind, "The One Percent Solution".

As far back as 1995, Philippine police in Manila had uncovered an al Qaeda related plot to hijack commercial airliners and fly them into American buildings. The plan was named "Project Bojinka" and the World Trade Center was specifically mentioned as a target. This information was turned over to U.S. Intelligence, but no preventive measures were ever ordered, even though the CIA was informed the attack would involve airplanes…

The attacks of 9/11 have helped authoritarian countries increase their control over their people and countries they are fighting, under the pretext of defending themselves against terror. It also helped the Bush administration impose measures that greatly expanded the Federal government's control over the American population. The attacks also provided an excuse to start the desired war on Iraq. But as the American people became aware that the Bush administration had misrepresented the facts used to take America into that Iraq war, they lost a significant degree of trust in their own government. That led to further questions about the 9/11 attacks and fueled the 9/11 conspiracy movement at the heart of which are the lies of the Bush Administration and the reasonably resulting distrust of the American people.

It was George W. Bush's incompetence, not clever design, that allowed the 9/11 attacks to take place. The tragedy could likely have been prevented had his administration attended to the numerous danger signals preceding those attacks by mustering the surveillance already in place and increasing the airport security measures. There certainly remain a number of strange coincidences and unexplained phenomena relevant to the 9/11 attacks, but the assertion that they could have been an inside government job strains credibility. It would have been insane, even for an administration as misguided as that of George W. Bush's, for the neocons to have orchestrated such an event, because the level of organization necessary for such acts would inevitably have leaked and led to the destruction of the Republican Party forever. Although George W. Bush did manage to implode Republican prospects in general, it is important for the country as a whole to focus its attention on the serious challenges left his wake. Toward that end, Congressional investigations of the Bush/Cheney years would be most appropriate.