Someone has said out loud what many quietly suspect: Bush and pals let it happen, nay, prayed something like 9/11 would happen in hopes of gaining an excuse to advance their own criminal political goals.

Remember that quizzical, bnlack-faced stare on Bush's face when the news came in the elementary school classroom? Was it the realization that the goal had been reached and thoughts of how best to exploit it that he was mulling? We'll never know, even if we get the Nuremberg-trype trials of Bush & Co. truth and justice call for.

Even more significant than Clarke’s revelations about the Bush administration’s cynical exploitation of the 9/11 atrocity to pursue its pre-9/11 agenda against Iraq—and much less noted in the media coverage—are Clarke’s revelations about the attitude of the Bush administration to terrorist threats before September 11. At best, his description suggests a degree of incompetence and seeming indifference to the warnings of a terrorist attack within the United States that rises to the level of criminal negligence.

More likely, however, is another explanation of why the Bush administration made little effort to locate Al Qaeda operatives and break up their terrorist schemes. Without perhaps anticipating the full dimensions of such a terrorist attack—foresight is not a hallmark of Bush & Co.— the administration quietly welcomed the prospect of an outrage by the “little guy” (as Wolfowitz called him), because it would give them the pretext necessary to wage war on the “big guy”—Saddam Hussein. WSWS