The first is a story with familiar contours – we may have or should have known more about the whereabouts and actions of Mohammed Atta before that fateful day. This is a recurring theme, we’ve seen it before, and we’ll see it again, and essentially, I am not certain how much it tells us, other than that we were woefully prepared on September 11th, which we all already knew. The inclination of too many is to use this for partisan gain – the question of WHO failed on 9/11 is, bizarrely, more important to some people than finding out the answers that matter – HOW did we fail, and short of Superman coming to the rescue and turning back time by flying really fast around the globe (I was always skeptical of that one), how can we address future attacks that we can be assured are even now in the planning stages?
The second story seems more definitively to tie al Qaeda to the July attacks in London. This comes as no surprise, and yet in the wake of the July 7th bombings, and the far less effective attempts two weeks later, there was a great deal of speculation as to whether al Qaeda could be effective in mounting such campaigns as the ones that led to such carnage in London. The evidence is still tentative, but the warning attached to the video in question is clear on one point: The British should expect more attacks. Al Qaeda have not shown themselves to be either bluffers or kidders, so we should take them at their word.
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