My God, I never thought I'd see you cite Brisard. The entire thesis of his book is that there was Saudi funding for Bin Laden's organization. Everybody has known that since the beginning of the war. Further, in an interview with the lefty online outfit Buzzflash, Brisard stated the most profoundly simple reason why September 11th caught us unawares.
In terms of finding Bin Laden, I don't know. But I will say that the failure to stop Bin Laden prior to 9/11 is for me essentially a cultural failure. The United States intelligence and policy was in a state of mind where basically people were thinking that they would never be hurt directly by the threat. That Bin Laden to some extent was under control even if embassies in Africa and the USS Cole were attacked. They were in a situation where they were feeling protected. The United States never experienced or expected an attack on their soil from Bin Laden. Even after the '93 Trade Center bombing, U.S. intelligence didn't fully understand the potential for future attacks.
There was no conspiracy, Betty Jo. There was no treason, by George Bush, Condi Rice, Colin Powell, or any other American. The Bojinka report stayed in its file because no one, save Bin Laden himself, thought to ram airplanes into buildings at a certain time on a certain day. One can conceivably point to failures of the Clinton Administration to take bin Laden seriously, but it was only during the Bush Administration that we even began to conceive of a military campaign to undo Al Qaeda. You can scream treason and express hatred and malice towards public officials of your own government all you want, but you cannot change history. Al Qaeda won that day because Al Qaeda had the element of surprise on its side.
Just because someone forwards a report does not mean that that report becomes actionable. That's why Bojinka was relatively unimportant. No one had done it before on such a massive scale. Bin Laden's people did truck bombings, ship bombings, and embassies. They also did them overseas. This consideration will become important given an example I will provide below.
You will never understand that the surprise achieved by Al Qaeda on September 11th was inevitable. You won't because you're a conspiracy nut, not an historian, but that's beside the point. The agressor in any conflict always has the element of surprise on his side. He always has the choice of time, means, and method of attack. There is literally no way to cover a determined terrorist attacker who has the element of strategic surprise. The cultural ethos Brisard spoke of above is important to understand, as it applies to this situation. The entire United States government, from 1993 on, considered the Al Qaeda problem to be criminal in nature. That was a mistake in thinking, but it was not the criminally treasonous mistake that you make it out to be. I might despise Bill Clinton for failing to nab Bin Laden from the Sudanese when he had his chance, but it would be childish of me to presume that Bill Clinton was being treasonous. He was merely being shortsighted by citing legalisms to prevent the extradition of bin Laden from Sudan.
One of the things that stand out from your posts is an almost criminal negligence of the example of history. Bin Laden was fated to succeed because he followed the example of the Japanese, who succeeded before him.
In January of 1941, the Pacific Fleet was moved from San Diego to its temporary holding station at Lahanai Roads, Hawaii. It was then moved to its new permanent base at the Pearl Harbor anchorage. The Japanese took note of this. The presence of the Pacific Fleet threatened Japanese naval operations. The Imperial Japanese Navy was ordered to begin planning a theoretical model for attacking the American Fleet.
But it wasn't the first time that people had thought of Pearl Harbor. Late in the previous decade, as U.S. Naval Officers studied the move to Pearl, they understood that putting the Fleet out in the middle of the Pacific put it closer to Japanese naval power. Specifically, the Fleet was placed closer to Japan's new First Mobile Fleet-her powerful carrier air arm.
But the entire assumption behind Naval War Plane RAINBOW ORANGE was that Japan would move due south and take the Phillipines and the Dutch East Indies. It was then assumed that the U.S. Fleet would move west to meet the Combined Fleet in a massive naval battleship duel in the vicinity of the Caroline Islands/ Phillipine Sea area. The assumption was faulty. The Japanese had other plans, especially after the Go To War Conference in September of 1941. The Japanese planning was outside the box. They wanted to kill the U.S. fleet before it could weigh anchor. Indeed, they worked the technology angle (shallow running torpedoes) so that the American assumption about Pearl Harbor's shallowness could be used against the Americans.
We were complacent. The Japanese knew this. Even though some of their ships broke radio silence during the approach to Pearl Harbor, the Americans at the command level were none the wiser. As Gordon Prange wrote, "...at dawn we slept".
We were surprised, then and six decades later, because people literally couldn't conceive of the kind of attacks made were being seriously considered by the opposition. Saying "there were specific warnings of attacks" to Rice or Bush doesn't give time, place, or means and method. Pretending that it does and crying "treason" merely reinforces my opinion of you that you're a nutjob.
The crafty enemy always has the element of surprise at the beginning of of any conflict. Al Qaeda was such an enemy. That is what you will not understand.
I understand that this entire effort is wasted on you, but I must, nonetheless, confront your fiery mendacities with the cold water of history.
Be Seeing You,
Chris