The hard truth is that, according to the screening rules in effect on Sept. 11 (no blades over 4 inches), every hijacker would probably have gotten on free and clear no matter how careful the screeners had been. Had the screeners been given the vision of Heimdahl, and paid $250,000 a year, and had every bag been X-rayed and subjected to neutron explosives sniffers, nothing would have been different.

The hijackers found a loophole in the system and exploited it. It's not likely to happen twice the same way, although the guy with the shoe bomb was fishing for yet another loophole. Had his bomb been more sophisticated, with an electric detonator, it may have been a different story.

Despite what many say, I don't believe there was any reasonable way to anticipate the Sept. 11 attack and shut it down, short of some lucky happenstance that would have intercepted the detailed plans and directed them down all the right channels.

In hindsight, those who noticed the odd flying lessons and strange behaviors of the hijackers are now seen as prophets that no one listened to. This isn't really fair, considering the huge number of screwball threats that filter through our authorities every day.

Shit happens. The problem is that human nature, and it's natural abhorrence of chaos, tends to make us believe that Everything Is Somebody's Fault*. Lawyers do very little to disabuse us of this notion, since the Blame Game makes them big bucks. People need to believe that something that is basically unfixable (Shit happening) can be fixed, and there are plenty of other people willing to exploit this.

In ancient times, people were comforted by a shaman shaking a rattle at the sky. Something Was Being Done.

Nowadays, they look to the government to fix things, however ineffectively and symbolically. Unfortunately, this is a lot more expensive than the shamans were.

*More than a few gods owe their existences to this fact of human nature.