19 angry muslims.

This is a common theme in 9/11 conspiracy theories, that somehow 19 Muslims couldn’t have possibly managed an attack of such magnitude.

This requires the persons to be unfamiliar with how al Qaeda operated. Al Qaeda had a number of successful attacks against US targets, from the USS Cole to the US Embassy’s. A common denominator in these attacks is a trend toward simultaneous attacks on multiple targets.

Under the Clinton administration the al Qaeda threat was taken seriously, because it had years of experience in tracking the growing threat. When the Bush administration started, it was still working under the cold mentality and viewed al Qaeda as lesser threat, in much the same manner as people now want to dismiss al Qaeda as either a bunch of angry Muslims or a bunch of crazy people living in caves.

The leadership of al Qaeda is intelligent, educated, and determined. Underestimating them lead to 9/11.

People wonder how our government could be so incompetent to allow this to happen. It wasn’t incompetence or even complacency per se. It was a justifiable mindset that caused us to dismiss signs about this particular attack. Every day, there are intelligence reports indicating an attack on the United States. Most of these intelligence hits are nothing more than people talking with no means of actually carrying out such attacks. However, against this backdrop the actual chatter of a real terrorist has to be winnowed.

Certain types of attacks were given a lower probability. One group was large scale suicide attacks in the United States. This is because there is an inherent problem with getting the suicide attackers to complete the mission after they have left their handlers. It is estimated that more than 30% of all such attackers in Israel change their minds before the attack. This is immediately after leaving their handlers. A time measured in a few hours at most. It was presumed that having a keeping a large number of suicide bombers in the United States for a prolonged period was an unlikely avenue of attack.

That presumption was trumpeted on 9/11. In an attack that was not remarkable difficult to carry out. Booking a flight is not difficult. Attacking innocent unprepared people is not difficult. Once the planes had been seized, hitting something is not difficult. We presume the targets were the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon, but we don’t know this for a fact. Perhaps the White House was the target, but that proved impossible, so the Pentagon was hit instead, because of difficulty in maintaining control of the plane.

What we do know is that the attackers kept reassuring everyone that everything was going to be all right, that nobody else was going to be hurt. This allowed the first three planes to complete their mission, because the passengers believed them. We also know that by the time of the fourth plane, the passengers were aware of what was happening and fought back. In less than six hours the opportunity for such attacks had ceased, because the mindset of the passengers had changed.

That is the essence of stopping terrorist attacks. You have to anticipate what they are capable of based both on their competencies and your vulnerabilities. This is difficult, and yet we get in right far more often than we get in wrong. It’s just you hear about the mistakes and the victories go wholly unnoticed.