Means and Ends: Boy, that got your dander up. I don't think we should revoke the probable cause restriction either. But the press and the public are gradually yielding to the belief that someone, somewhere, could have stopped this tragedy. On the right, that means "Clinton had eight years to respond; Bush only had 8 months." On the left, it means "Bush was demonstrably looking the wrong way for all of those 8 months."

As for intelligence, we knew about hijackings. And we knew about talk of private planes, packed with explosives, used as weapons. Contrary to Richard Ben Veniste's assertions, the link between the plane-bomb and the hijacked commercial flight was not seen in advance. Even Richard Clarke, the new Jesus of the Democrats, doesn't claim that he saw that one coming. I'm more interested in who dropped the ball on the WMD intel than who should get nailed for failing to accurately predict the future actions of al-Qaeda. That also will likely descend quickly into partisan sniping. But at least it will answer some questions. To paraphrase the SecDef (like him or not, it's true): September 11th was an unknown unknown. WMD was a known unknown. Someone deserves to dangle for the latter, not the former.