To get serious...
All this talk about what should have been done by any past Administration is rather silly, because the difference between pre- and post-9/11 isn't who was in the White House, it was the attacks themselves. How can we speculate about making an effort on the scale of our response to 9/11, in response to earlier and much smaller attacks? It hardly computes. As alternate histories go, that one doesn't have a solid premise to start with.
This piqued my interest:
You have to face up to the fact that you can't start complaining about how we didn't do enough to get bin Laden and give the entire previous administration a free pass.
Who's this "we", Tonto? I swear, that sentence parses out to make you a member of the Bush Administration. Is that why you have time to write so much in defense of The President? Is your job, in fact, to spread Republican propaganda using the HabitableZone as your bully pulpit???? Hmmmmm? Vell, ansuh the qvuestion!