"Bush Kept Us Safe..."

Well, according to this article by Kurt Eichenwald in today's NY Times, no he didn't.

According to still classified documents, the CIA attempted to warn the administration about a major impending attack for months, and were thwarted in their efforts by the NeoCons under Paul Wolfowitz who controlled the Pentagon.  Apparently, the Pentagon was already planning the Iraq invasion and considered Al Qaeda to be a distraction, perhaps even a tool of Sadam Hussein.  Wolfowitz and company insisted that the very conspicuous preparation by Al Qaeda for an attack on the USA was a hoax, a ruse to distract attention from Iraq.  The CIA issued detailed memos pointing out the absurdity of these claims, pleading with the administration to take the warnings of an imminent attack seriously.  Bush sided with the NeoCons at the Pentagon, and the rest is history.

I never believed any of the elaborate conspiracy theories by left-wing paranoids that the Bush Administration did the 9/11 attacks.  I can't see how an administration so ridden with corruption, conflict, and incompetence could have brought off anything as elaborate as the schemes cooked up in paranoid imaginations.  I'm 100% sure that the whole responsibility for the attacks lies with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

A less involved and elaborate conspiracy theory popular here in New York is that the Bush Administration knew these attacks were about to happen and that they let them happen to build public support for the planned invasion of Iraq.  Part of this is an updated version of the old Pearl Harbor conspiracy theory, about Roosevelt deliberately letting the Japanese attack in order to bring the USA into World War II.  Part of this is local resentment in New York; "the response would have been different if Houston was attacked," I heard over and over in the months just after the attack.  I'm 98% certain that this conspiracy theory is false.