There is no way we would have tolerated an aggressive campaign against Bin Laden prior to 9/11. No amount of hindsight can change that fact.
There is still the question about whether the intelligence community should have been able to avert the attack in some other way. I doubt we will ever know.
... yet another good read.
In a parallel universe called 'what if.'
NEW YORK - President-elect John F. Kerry's rise to the nation's highest office came as little surprise following almost four years of remonstrations against President George W. Bush for his bizarre attack on the defenseless people of Afghanistan.
Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, was the right man for a nation outraged by the Bush administration's pre-emptive war, which, it now seems clear, was based on highly speculative intelligence that Saudi Arabian-born terrorist Osama bin Laden was planning an attack on the United States.
Absent absolute proof of such an imminent attack, Bush's Sept. 10 bombing of Afghanistan earned him international condemnation and, in all likelihood, an indictment in coming weeks. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, appearing last night on "Larry King Live," said the United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal likely would bring charges of genocide against Bush.
Bush also faces federal charges at home for his baseless arrest of 19 foreign nationals, many of them native Saudis, whose "crime" was attending American flight schools. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has joined the American Civil Liberties Union in a joint suit against both Bush and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, charging racial profiling, unlawful arrest and illegal search and seizure.
Kerry's campaign mantra - "You go to war because you have to, not because you want to" - clearly resonated with Americans as they tried to make sense of Bush's Sept. 10 attack on Afghanistan. Neither the president, nor national security adviser Condoleezza Rice convincingly defended their actions during the recent "9-10 Commission" hearings, which Congress ordered in response to public outcry....
So much of this rings true as to how we complacent Americans fresh off the contentious 2000 election were likely to respond if all the "know it all nows" had things the way they say they should have been pre-9/11.
Evie 
Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic