At Huffington Post, FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley has written a piece titled,
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed neocons can destroy the world (if we let them). While I recommend the entire editorial, here I will extract only this part:
"On page 362 of the Epilogue of his insightful book Chain of Command, Seymour Hersh asked the question back in 2004 that I predict will become the major question all historians will have to answer: "How did they do it? How did eight or nine neoconservatives who believed that a war in Iraq was the answer to international terrorism get their way? How did they redirect the government and rearrange long-standing American priorities and policies with so much ease? How did they overcome the bureaucracy, intimidate the press, mislead the Congress, and dominate the military? Is our democracy that fragile?""
The answer, Coleen, is simple: 9/11.