"Intelligence problems existed under Clinton and his funloving Republican Congress."

Yes, one could say it's been a long term problem.

"Now, how about the Bush administration's determination to go to war with Iraq before 9/11?"

I think anyone who was aware of international affairs, knew that Iraq was a problem. If nothing else, Iraq was a problem in regard to doing something about Iran. If you look at a map, you can easily see that Iran is important in terms of it's ability to stop oil whereas Iraq wasn't located in region so as to be so easily able to stop oil exports of the entire region.
Now, if Saddam wasn't a insane person, if Saddam had been faintly reasonable- even if he could pretend to be faintly reasonable, there would have less concern. The problem was that the easier route for him was to blame everything on America, that it was easier for Saddam to be at war with America then doing the hard work of actually improving the conditions in Iraq.
I think it's a pity that some countries also think that being at war with America is an easier path. Obviously, Americans don't want to be at war with any country. Obviously it would better if America did not at this time in history, have to be the Global Policemen. But we do need some kind of global security- isolationism is not an option in the modern world.
And if we could resolve some other issues- such as N Korea and Tiawan- both these connected to China- this could go along way in reducing our global security issues. Unfortuately it seems that China does not apparently see how this would improve their long term security- in fact I think they are deluding themselves in that they feel they need this unresolved because what their REAL problem is mainland China internal security.

A good solution is for countries such Japan to increase their miltary spending and improve their miltary. They are doing this to some extent. Also the EU needs to spend more on their miltary- some progress is being made here but it's painfully slow.

"And the immediate attempt to tie Saddam to al Qaeda when everyone knew they were operating out of Afghanistan? "

There were connections between Saddam and al Qaeda. Al Qaeda didn't just operate out of Afghanistan- it was a global network. What is pretty obvious is that Saddam's regime wasn't very helpful in doing things to stop terrorism. Whereas Syria which is more connected to terrorism and for longer period, did cooperate with us in efforts to fight the terrorists.
The problem with Syria is serious, but if our judgement is that Syria is making real efforts in this direction- that counts for quite a bit. This relationship with Syria in regards to terrorism is not something I can judge easily because it's covert- but I can listen to Syria's ambassador, and that helps provide *some* assurances. I mean if Syria's ambassador is publically saying they are fully cooperating in fighting terrorism- and there no American who know about this which are denying this- that's at least something.

Of course, what is missing is the idea that we were going to invade Iraq regardless of any action Saddam could have taken. Maybe it was a good bet that Saddam wouldn't take any action to stop this but it was quite easy for a capable leader to have taken action which would prevented Iraq from being invaded. Saddam simply wanted this war, he thought he had a good chance of actually winning.