This may be the issue that sinks the Bush second term. Because of the inappropriate agenda of his administration our counter-terrorism efforts (such as they were) were cut back. The solid information we did have was not followed up on. It's clear that if counter-terrorism had had the same priority as before this administration, 9/11 would not have happened. These guys left plenty of tracks and we actually got one of them into custody. The blame for 9/11 should be placed squarely on the policies of the administration. According to Newsweek John Ashcroft didn't want to hear about terrorist threats. His budget had little in it for counter-terrorism. Rumsfield vetoed a request to divert $800 million from NMD to counter-terrorism. Condaleeza Rice's predecessor Sandy Berger told her that terrorist threats would take most of her time. Instead the new administration was more interested on the war on drugs and actually made positive overtures to the Taliban.