In point of fact the warnings were NOT unprecedented. There were many, many, MANY warnings prior to 9/11 that were similar and of which nothing came. Hence the reason for investigations into the credibility of the source and into the intelligence itself.
As an example; prior to the embassy bombings in Kenya, Tanzania, and Libya, there were numerous warnings from the IC about possible attacks against US interests abroad, but as with 9/11, they were vague and unspecified enough to make it nearly impossible to determine possible locations or targets. Looking back in hindsight we run into the same problem we have with 9/11; we see the warnings and say, "see, we should have beefed up security at embassies! It's clear now that they were talking about the embassies!" All the while forgetting that when the warnings were initially delivered we had no clue where possible targets might be.
Intelligence is and always will be a vague practice. In essence, an intel analyst is playing a giant guessing game. They're giving their best guess as to what will happen based on a series of factors and knowledge of the group or groups in question. It is not a perfect practice by a long shot; mistakes, sometimes costly ones, are made more often than most people care to admit, but at least it's better than doing nothing. It is notable that, whenever catastrophes like 9/11 occur, blame is immediately placed on the intelligence as if the intel agents should be omniscient and be able to explain exactly what will happen ahead of time, and that just isn't the case. President Bush and the rest of the government were working with vague intelligence that came at a volume only slightly higher than normal, and in response they requested more information in order to be able to make a more definitive action possible (i.e. the 70+ investigations undertaken by the FBI and other agencies). Given that the warnings we received (you know, the forty warnings that mjd says are so specific) contained NO actionable intelligence, rather than going off half-cocked, the government decided it would be better to search out more information. It's a decision faced EVERY TIME warnings come in, and not just by the government, but by the intelligence agencies and the military as well. Collectively they have to decide if it's worth it to take action right away or if it's better to wait for more information. Sometimes they're wrong, but more often they are right. It's just a shame that some of the times they're wrong is when tragedies like 9/11 occur, but they are only human; they are not gods.
And by the way, mjd, I dislike you acting as though those were the ONLY reports received the entire time; there are, at any given time, thousands of reports on various intelligence investigations circulating in the IC in my estimate, and while not all of those get up high enough to be inserted into the PDB, there were dozens of other reports that were in the PDB BESIDES those forty reports. The President receives the top fifteen or twenty, as I understand it (and I might be making a low estimate) reports his advisors feel are most important on a daily basis, and prior to 9/11, there were EIGHT MONTHS worth of PDBs in which those forty reports were scattered. Even taking my lowest estimate of fifteen reports per day for eight months, you still have around 3600 items that the President saw in his daily brief prior to 9/11. Explain to me, please, how those forty reports supposedly stood out over the other approximately 3560 reports he received that year prior to 9/11. Trust me when I say you can't.
