Able Danger

It seems that the blogosphere is up in arms about the Able Danger working group and what they knew or didn't know prior to September 11, 2001. The link above will take you to Google, and you can pick your medicine and take your poison. I don't have an opinion on Able Danger.

That working group found some things and learned some things, but in the light of pre-9/11, not much was done about it, because the idea that a terrorist group would strike the United States was insane. Nobody believed it would happen. Nobody.

The United States experienced a sea-change on September 11th, and what was previously insane was now reality. I know that I experienced a change of life that September morning, and I suspect that most of us were shocked, confused, and confounded that day. There were a lot of tears. I know that I cried watching the carnage unfold, replaced by a pure white hot anger. That anger has subsided into a grim determination to protect those I am responsible for. Threats that I dismissed on September 10th are now evaluated for concerns that arose on September 11th.

I am convinced that the Intelligence Community did the best they could with the information available to them on the days prior to 9/11. They were operating in a different world, with different expectations than the world we all found on the morning of September 11th. I cannot fault them for a change of perspective.

I don't fault George Bush for continuing to read to a group of children as the events unfolded. He couldn't stop what was happening, but he could continue to comfort a group of children. I don't fault John Kerry for feeling unsettled and confused that morning. We all felt that way.

September 10th, we were on top of the world and at the height of our prosperity. September 11th, we were at war. Times changed, and that morning, time stopped for just an instant while we all took a breath and began life in a world we hadn't envisioned.