"Keith Willshaw" wrote:
"Mike Marron" wrote:

Correct. It all boils down to exactly that. The air force, in
addition to the army, navy, marine corps and coast guard along
with the vast array of civilian intelligence and national security
agencies are all paid good money to defend the U.S. Afterall,
that be their jobs, man. But all of the above completely and totally
failed to do that on 9/11. Now, had they succeeded in stopping the
terrorist attacks on 9/11 we would all be singing their praises still
to this day. Oh well...ya' win some and ya lose some.

True enough but the issue is what was the nature of the failure ?

The primary agency responsible for defense against international
terrorism within the USA prior to Sept 11 was presumably the
FBI with the CIA being responsible for collecting such intelligence
overseas as may indicate foreign agencies involved

As an outsider it seems to me that it was those two agencies
along with the INS that failed to identify the nature of the
threat and the individuals involved. Had they given the USAF
a timely warning then by all means blame that body but they
clearly did not and the USAF would be heavily criticised if
it tried to usurp the functions of either the CIA or FBI.

Plenty of folks, including myself, know that there's plenty of blame
to go around for the 9/11 massacre. The obvious failures of the CIA,
FBI, INS, etc. aside, the Air Force must also accept its fair share of
the blame since highly trained and well-paid Air Force Intelligence,
Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) specialists are heavily
involved with counterterrorism operations.