I finally sat down and finished reading The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. This book should be required reading for all Americans. Wright interweaves two compelling story lines; one a fascinating history of radical Islam from it's inception in Egypt to al-Qaeda and modern jihad; the other an honest assessment of our government's failure to properly assess this threat and prevent 9/11. It's good stuff and I highly recommend it. Check out this little nugget:

Al-Qaeda's duty was to awaken the Islamic nation to the threat posed by the secular, modernizing West. In order to do that, bin Laden told his men, al-Qaeda would drag the United States into a war with Islam—"a large scale front which it cannot control."

Is it just me, or does that not make our preznit look amazingly stupid? 9/11 was a truly heinous crime against America, but it was essentially just a crime. Rather than treat it as a crime; track down and bring justice or death to Osama bin Laden and his posse, dubya unveiled his bullshit War on Terra and declared it would be a long war, perhaps taking generations to win. He gave Osama bin Laden exactly what he wanted; empowered him. He got played by a guy who hasn't seen indoor plumbing in a decade.