Masqueradeless Magic

[Laertes]

Ironically, they were right. Compared to deaths from most other sources, Islamic terrorists kind of suck at killing Americans.

[DSMatticus]

Well, yeah, you can see how much support there was for the idea that terrorism was a major threat in The Declining Terrorist Threat published on July 10, 2001.

The president does not get his intel from New York Times' articles complaining that terrorism is an overhyped threat (it was and is). He gets classified briefs from the CIA that tell him what actual terrorist cells are actually doing. And from May onwards, his daily briefs included warnings that there was an active terrorist cell in the United States that was considering a plan to hijack a bunch of planes and/or blow some stuff up. The intelligence community really did predict this one, and then kept predicting it for four months straight until it finally happened. The CIA watched that shit unfold in real time, but the administration chose to ignore it.