Doesn't seem implausible to me.
What's your explanation / narrative of events?
How so?
No. He may or may not have been sincerely religious, but his foreign policy had nothing to do with religion or fighting evil as far as I can tell. Where am I wrong?
I'm sorry that I didn't respond to this.
1. The 9/11 story starts before the 1990's, so I am not going to start there. I think a more appropriate starting point is in the late 1990's, which was a time for the U.S. IC when they recognized the seriousness of the threat that they were facing -- a global terrorist organization capable of pulling off multiple high casualty attacks simultaneously and who wanted to kill as many Americans as they could regardless if they worked for the government. Remember, the East African embassy bombings were a part of the upwards trend of terrorist attacks by Islamists specifically targeting the U.S.
C.I.A. Director Tenet declared war on OBL later in '98. The C.I.A. by that time had already had a unit specifically focused on OBL for 2 years. OBL had been a closely-watched-man since 1991. His desire to attack America was well-known throughout the '90's. OBL was not alone in that desire, as the Islamic extremist movement to attack the U.S. (and the West in general as well as Israel) gathered a lot of momentum in the 90's, which is evidenced by the '93 WTC bombing, the Eiffel Tower plot involving Algerian terrorists, the Bojinka plot, the bombings in Saudi Arabia and threats against specific targets like the WTC (using planes, no less) by Egyptian terrorists.
The U.S. IC was also aware of sleeper cells. The U.S. IC had extensive dealings with infiltrators before 9/11, just like every other intelligence service on the planet. Counterintelligence exists to catch terrorists and spies alike. Though it is officially disputed, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) ran an open-source data mining program and identified several of the al Qaeda hijackers, including Mohammed Atta. It was reported (in Britain, France, Germany and Israel) that the Israeli Mossad had given U.S. Intelligence a list with all of the hijackers names on it -- as Israel was actively spying on Arabs/Muslims in the U.S. at the time. IIRC, 2 hijackers stationed on the West Coast lived with an F.B.I. informant. The C.I.A. knew that several hijackers had entered the U.S. It has been reported (by Richard Clarke and the BBC) that the C.I.A. tracked some of the hijackers and tried to recruit them. The F.B.I. (as evidenced by the 8/6/01 PDB) knew that active casing measures were being undertaken by the sleeper cells in the preparation of hijacking aircraft.
The story as it stands now is that on 9/11 the hijackers got on U.S. commercial aircraft unopposed because they had avoided detection by the U.S. IC. Well, unfortunately, the open-record refutes that claim. Many people who worked in the U.S. IC at the time have expressed frustration at the fact that when the flight manifests were pulled and the names of the hijackers were learned that it pissed them off to realize "We know these names." It has also been revealed to us that a few of the IC analysts working on the OBL/al Qaeda were wanting to quit prior to 9/11 (paraphrasing) "because we knew an attack was coming and no one was doing anything about it."
The "not doing anything" didn't originate from incompetency. U.S. Executive Leadership is well-informed. The C.I.A. purposely made the effort to combat the notions from Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld that the threats were propaganda and not to be taken seriously. It has been reported that when Bush received the August 6th briefing at his ranch in Texas, he said to the briefer (paraphrasing) "All right, you've covered your ass now."
What we saw on 9/11 was the result of purposeful administrative inaction. The upper echelon of the Bush administration had been peppered with information about OBL/al Qaeda/their plots since before Bush even took office (from a crooked election, no less) by the U.S. IC transition team. They knew the attacks were coming and just stood by and let them happen.
2. By utilizing the massive worldwide informant network the U.S. can either control themselves or get access to by friendly intelligence services. Pursuing leads. Going through records from the I.N.S. and State Department (knowing that there were sleeper cells currently inside the U.S.). Utilizing other methods at their disposal like databases or intrusions into private networks they think might be relevant.
3. Bush didn't know much about 'foreign policy'. That was talked about before he was elected. He was a lightweight. He had a team of right-wing foreign policy gurus, called The Vulcans, give him crash courses on the way geopolitics work. His religiousness was well-established prior to taking the oath of office as President. While he said many outrageous things as POTUS, I don't think him talking about religion in context to his foreign policy decisions or the way he viewed the struggle is among them. I believe he was sincere when he made those remarks.
