(Editor's Note: The upcoming 2004 election year will be the most important
in the history of this country.  During the course of the year 'The Review'
will highlight several key issues on the domestic front to assist you in
making informed decisions.

Of course, no other event has had a more profound impact on our country
than the horrible events of September 11th.  With the recent '2-Year
Anniversary' of the September 11th attacks in mind, we present this
following account that raises dozens of key questions that the American
public still deserves to have answered.

No event in recent history has been written about, talked about, or watched
and rewatched as much as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Not only was it the deadliest terrorist strike inside America, but the
hijackings and attacks on New York City's World Trade Center and the
Pentagon in Washington were also a seminal event for an information-soaked
media age of Internet access and 24- hour news.

So, why after 730 days do we know so little about what really happened that
day?

No one knows where the alleged mastermind of the attack is, and none of
his accomplices has been convicted of any crime. We're not even sure if the
19 people identified by the U.S. government as the suicide hijackers are
really the right guys.

Who put deadly anthrax in the mail? Where were the jet fighters that were
supposed to protect America's skies that morning? And what was the role of
our supposed allies Saudi Arabia and Pakistan?

There are dozens of unanswered questions about the 2001 attacks, but we've
narrowed them down eleven.

1. What did National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tell President Bush
about al Qaeda threats against the United States in a still-secret briefing
on Aug. 6, 2001?   Rice has suggested in vague terms that the president's
brief - prepared daily by the CIA - included information that morning about
Osama bin Laden's methods of operation - including hijacking. But when the
congressional committee probing Sept. 11 asked to see the report, Bush
claimed executive privilege and refused to release it.

2. Why did Attorney General John Ashcroft and some Pentagon officials
cancel commercial-airline trips before Sept. 11?  On July 26, 2001 - 47
days before the Sept. 11 attacks - CBS News reported that Ashcroft was
flying expensive charters rather than commercial flights because of a
"threat assessment" by the FBI. CBS said, "Ashcroft has been advised to
travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term." Newsweek later
reported that on Sept. 10, 2001, "a group of top Pentagon officials
suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of
security concerns." Did either Ashcroft or the Pentagon have advance
information about a 9/11-style attack and, if so, why wasn't this shared
with the American public?

3. Who made a small fortune "shorting" airline and insurance stocks before
Sept. 11? On Sept. 10, 2001, the trading ratio on United Airlines was 25
times greater than normal at the Pacific Exchange, where traders could buy
"puts," high-risk bets that the price of a company's stock will fall
sharply. The next day, two hijacked United jetliners crashed, causing the
company's shares to plummet and ultimately leading the airline into
bankruptcy. CBS News later reported that at intelligence agencies, "alarm
bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market"
on the day before the attacks. The unusual stock trading suggests that
someone with a sophisticated knowledge of finance also had advance
information about the impending attack. But two years later, no one has
been charged in this matter, and officials have not indicated even if the
probe is still open.

4. Are all 19 people identified by the government as participants in the
Sept. 11 attacks really the hijackers? Probably not. Just 10 days after the
attacks, a report by the British Broadcasting Corp. said that some of the
supposed hijackers identified by the FBI appeared to be alive and well. The
BBC story said Abdelaziz al-Omari, named as the pilot who crashed the jet
into the World Trade Center's North Tower, was reported by Saudi
authorities to be working as an electrical engineer. He reported his
passport had been stolen in Denver in 1995. Saudi officials said it was
possible that another three people whose names appear on the FBI list also
are alive. The article, which can be read at Unanswered Questions, makes a
persuasive case that another man was posing as Ziad Jarrah, the alleged
pilot of hijacked Flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville, Pa. So why did
this story line vanish into thin air?

5 . Why did the NORAD air defense network fail to intercept the four
hijacked jets?  During the depths of the Cold War, Americans went to bed
with the somewhat reassuring belief that jet fighters would intercept
anyone launching a first strike against the United States. That myth was
shattered on 9/11, when four hijacked-jetliners-turned-into-deadly-missiles
cruised the American skies with impunity for nearly two hours.

Why did the North American Aerospace Defense Command seem unaware of
literally dozens of warnings that hijacked jetliners could be used as
weapons? Why does NORAD claim it did not learn that Flight 11 - the first
jet to strike the World Trade Center about 8:45 a.m. - had been hijacked
until 8:40 a.m., some 25 minutes after the transponder was shut off and an
astounding 15 minutes after flight controllers heard a hijacker say, "We
have some planes..."?

Why didn't the fighters that were finally scrambled at Otis Air Force Base
in Massachusetts and Langley Air Force Base in Virginia fly at top,
supersonic speeds? Why didn't fighters immediately take off from Andrews
Air Force Base, just outside Washington, D.C.? Why was nothing done to
intercept American Airlines Flight 77, which struck the Pentagon, when
officials knew it had been had been hijacked some 47 minutes earlier? And
why has no one been disciplined for the worst breakdown in national defense
since Pearl Harbor?

6. Why did President Bush continue reading a story to Florida
grade-schoolers for nearly a half-hour during the worst attack on America
in its history?  In arguably the greatest understatement in U.S. history,
Bush told a questioner at a California town-hall meeting in January 2002
that 9/11 "was an interesting day." Interesting, indeed. In the two years
since the attacks, questions have only grown about the president's bizarre
behavior that morning, when he was informed in a Sarasota classroom that
America was under attack.

"I couldn't stop watching the president sitting there, listening to
second-graders, while my husband was burning in a building," World Trade
Center widow Lorie van Auken, a leader of relatives of Sept. 11 victims who
have raised questions about the attacks, told Gail Sheehy in the New York
Observer.

Why did Bush read a children's story about a pet goat and stay in the
classroom for more than a half-hour after the first plane struck the World
Trade Center and roughly 15 minutes after Chief of Staff Andrew Card told
him that it had been a deliberate attack? Why didn't he take more decisive

action, and why wasn't he hustled to a secure area while the attacks were
clearly still under way?

7.  Where are the planes' "black boxes"?  Nothing is more critical to
learning about air disasters than the so-called "black boxes." They are the
30-minute audio recordings of cockpit chatter and the fight-data inputs
which show the speed, direction and operational condition of the plane, and
which are encased in material designed to withstand a high-speed crash. Yet
the government has continued to keep a lid of secrecy on the black boxes
from Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, and from Flight 93.

FBI Director Robert Mueller has said Flight 77's data recorder provided
altitude, speed, headings and other information, but the voice recorder
contained nothing useful. Why not? Why not release the information to the
public? Why has a docile mainstream media not demanded this information?

And how come none of the four "indestructible" black boxes was recovered
from the World Trade Center, even as investigators said that a passport
belonging to one of the hijackers had been found in the rubble, undamaged,
a week after the towers's collapse?

8.  Why were Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials so quick to link
Saddam Hussein to the attacks?   CBS News reported that the defense
secretary was making notes about invading Iraq even before the fires from
Flight 77 had been extinguished on the other side of the Pentagon. Rumsfeld
wrote that he wanted "best info fast. Judge whether good enough [to] hit
S.H." - Saddam Hussein - "at the same time. Not only UBL" - Osama bin
Laden. He added: "Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

Rumsfeld and a number of other Bush administration officials have ties to a
once-obscure policy group called the Project for a New American Century. In
a 2000 white paper, PNAC - which had long urged an American invasion of
Iraq - said that for the United States to assert itself properly as the
world's lone superpower, "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a
new Pearl Harbor" - would be required.

That new Pearl Harbor came - two years ago today.

9. Why did the Bush administration lie about dangerously high levels of
toxins and hazardous particles after the WTC collapse? Because apparently
some White House officials felt that the health of the American economy and
Wall Street was more important than the health of New York City residents
who lived nearby. For example, on Sept. 16, 2001, a draft press release
from the Environmental Protection Agency said: "Recent samples of dust
gathered by OSHA on Water Street showed higher levels of asbestos in EPA
tests." That was deleted and replaced with this: "The new samples confirm
previous reports that ambient air quality meets OSHA standards and
consequently is not a cause for public concern."

A key figure in the changes was the head of the White House Council on
Environmental Quality, who - you can't make this stuff up - is a lawyer who
formerly represented the asbestos industry.

In fact, the EPA told workers and residents that it was safe to return to
lower Manhattan at a time when some test results had not been analyzed and
other key tests had not even been performed. The outcome? Key medical
professionals say thousands of New Yorkers have developed respiratory
illnesses associated with exposure to the dust. Symptoms include periodic
gasping for air, a choking sensation and unusual sensitivity to airborne
irritants, apparently from a type of "occupational asthma" called Reactive
Airways Disease Syndrome.

10. What is in the 28 blacked-out pages of the congressional Sept. 11
report?  It's not a total mystery. Everyone has acknowledged that the pages
contain highly embarrassing information about links between the Sept. 11
hijackers and the government of Saudi Arabia, America's supposed ally in
the Middle East and home to the world's largest oil reserves. One of those
officials is said to be Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar, whose wife,
Princess Haifa, indirectly funded at least two of the Sept. 11 terrorists
during their time in San Diego. The prince is so close to the Bush family
that he's known, incredibly, as "Bandar Bush." This week, Time reports that
just after the Sept. 11 attacks, when U.S. commercial airspace was still
closed to our citizens, Bush allowed a jet to stop at 10 U.S. cities to
pick up and fly home 140 prominent Saudis, including relatives of bin Laden.

11. Where is Osama bin Laden?  Remember how President Bush vowed on Sept.
17, 2001, that he was determined to catch bin Laden "dead or alive"? Well,
the good news is that if he wants bin Laden "alive," there's still a chance
that could happen. Intelligence experts now agree that bin Laden
successfully escaped his Tora Bora hideout in Afghanistan back in December
2001 - when the U.S. failed to commit ample manpower to the chase - and
that the al Qaeda leader is alive and well, and plotting new attacks.

"We don't know where he is," Army Col. Rodney Davis, spokesman for
America's forces in Afghanistan, said recently. But Newsweek seems to know
where to find bin Laden: in the remote, mountainous - and lawless - Kunar
province of Afghanistan.

The magazine chillingly reported that just five short months ago, bin Laden
convened the biggest terror summit since Sept. 11 at a mountain stronghold
there. The participants reportedly included three top-ranking
representatives from the Taliban, several senior al Qaeda operatives and
leaders from radical Islamic groups in Chechnya and Uzbekistan. The topic
was carrying out attacks against U.S. interests inside Iraq.

The most chilling aspect of the Newsweek report is that bin Laden has
access to biological weapons and is determined to find a way to use them
against the United States. A source from the Taliban told the magazine:
"Osama's next step will be unbelievable."

But this week, ABC News reported that the hunt for bin Laden has been
narrowed to a different area - a 40-square-mile section of the Waziristan
region of Pakistan.
The report said that local residents suspected of trying to inform
Americans about bin Laden's whereabouts were executed in broad daylight.