"If we had been able to put (the hijackers) on the watch list of the airlines, the two who were in the country; again if we'd stopped some of those people at the borders; if we had acted earlier on al-Qaida when (it) was smaller and just getting started ... the whole story might have been different."
If. If. Maybe. If. If George W. Bush had phoned the Saudis on the first day of his administration and told them any act of Islamist terror would result in a mushroom cloud over Mecca, and that he would consider it "what we call in bowling a practice frame," it might have been different. It might have been different if B-52s had taken out the Taliban in February 2001 -- and we all know how Ted Kennedy et al. would have exploded in a rain of bile had Bush kicked off his term with a pre-emptive war. The articles of impeachment would have been drawn up before the first wave of bombers returned to base.