A little history lesson.
A few hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor the U.S. was aware that the Japanese were going to declare war on the US and that targets were going to be attacked. What was the unknown was the targets. I read this from the Book "Codebreakers".
Hindsight is an amazing thing. With all of the information I have seen from news report etc. I can only pick out that fact we were going to be attacked but the targets, date and time were unknown. To determine the targets and date, at best, is guessing, you have a better odds winning a million dollars at a Las Vegas blackjack table. Still, even with this hindsight the links are made with what I used to call Ouija board logic...poor at best.
The Office of the "DNI" did not exist before 9-11, inter-agency cooperations was hindered by the Clinton administration and good ole fashion inter-agency politics. This was my motivation to leave the Intelligence Community and got back to repairing Military Aircraft.
I definitely agree with you that hindsight is 20/20.
My only disappointment is that rather that focus on avoiding the next attack, Freepers see everything through partisan eyes. There was a time at FR — in the Fall of 2001 — that there was ;open source” intelligence analysis being done. Richard Clarke and others, like Tenet and Scheuer, would agree that 80-95% intelligence analysis is open source.
Instead, we get the “nuke em” and pave the mosques post above — or an immediate tendency to view the DNI’s comments in a partisan context.
His point is not a political one. It relates to the country’s need to focus on avoiding the next attack.
By focusing on that task.
Partisan political bickering is a big part of the problem, as illustrated by Conyers unconstructive comment. And FR has just been contributing to the unhelpful partisan bickering — to an extent that even Bill O’Reilly is criticizing it.
As a result, a vacuum forms and you get Freeper EdLake posting hundreds of articles on his webpage but intentionally excluding and refusing to post the article about the reported seizure of anthrax in Afghanistan etc.
That then misleads the busy MSM or public.
PostalMag is coming out with a 6th year anniversary special today on the anthrax attacks and if the feature suggests AQ is responsible, you can be sure Ed won’t include it in his many hundreds of articles.