If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too; – Kipling (of course). 

Top officials from the Bush administration have hit upon a revealing new theme as they retrospectively justify their national security policies. Call it the White House 9/11 trauma defense. 

Being in over their heads is probably not a good excuse for the crimes of the Bush gang. Can you plead incompetence which is what WH 9/11 trauma defense sounds like?  

Cheney's admission that 9/11 caused him to reassess the threats to the nation only underscores how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qaeda attack.

Let this never be forgotten, along with:

Shortly after the second World Trade Center tower was hit, I burst in on Rice (then the president's national security adviser) and Cheney in the vice president's  office and remember glimpsing horror on his face. 

And you guys wanted us to think you were the second coming of Churchill.

The Bush administration's response actually undermined the principles and values America has always stood for in the world, values that should have survived this traumatic event.

Al-Qaeda did not defeat the American people, only the little men in the White House who had no trust in American values of law and justice.