MORE ON FORESEEABILITY: Reader Justin Adams writes:

There will always be intelligence failures because people often aren’t or don’t act intelligently. That inevitability is most dangerous if you maintain a defensive posture and make yourself a static target. The lesson to be learned — the lesson we seem finally to have learned — is to attack our enemies and put them on the defensive, let them worry about intelligence failures. On the offense, bad intelligence means a missed opportunity to kill an enemy; on defense, it means 3000 dead citizens.

Meanwhile, reader Allen S. Thorpe comments:

This whole hubbub over unnoticed warnings is really old news. I agree with you that they shouldn’t be arguing that they “couldn’t” have foreseen this, but it really doesn’t matter. The only reason this is raising such a ruckus is that the Democrats are flailing around looking for an issue. If we want to start pointing fingers, how about our free press who are always standing up for the public’s right to know. They have names like Sentinel, Guardian, Observer and Herald, but why weren’t they campaigning for Clinton to do something about bin Laden and the other terrorists. Apparently, you need more than six deaths at home, and deaths of servicemen and diplomats don’t count, to get their attention or make them think beyond the last news cycle.

Sure the government let us down, but so did all of our institutions. We let each other down, but not being mad as hell that the first bombing of the WTC was treated as a mere criminal problem. Or that we didn’t get tough after our people were blown up in Beirut, or the Khobar towers, or the two embassies in Africa or in the Cole. I’m just glad that when 9/11 happened somebody started doing the right thing. What I’m worried about is that our indignation will drain away into congressional investigations and peace placards, because if we don’t keep our resolve, we’ll be ripe for more outrages.

UPDATE: A reader notes, regarding accountability: “Bush was not in office in 1999 but CIA director Tenet was. ”