For the previous [prevous to 2001] few years — as Philip Zelikow, the commission’s staff director, revealed this morning — the CIA had issued several warnings that terrorists might fly commercial airplanes into buildings or cities.

That's the point I'd like to see mentioned more often. During Clinton's last term, when everything was going well, Clinton said the next big threat will be from intelligent terrorists who figure out how to do big damage here without using bombs or anything that would show up on a metal detector. He wanted to get working on figuring what such terrorists would use. At that time, the RW dissed terrorist danger, saying Clinton was using it for an excuse to increase government power (just as Bush is actually doing). Iirc Gore had some sort of program going, which Bush cancelled as a waste of money.

So if Gore had been president (or his prevention program had been better funded by Congress during the Clinton admin), the whole 9/11 thing might not have happened at all....