On July 22nd, the 9/11 Commission, comprised of Chairman and Former New Jersey Governor Thomas H. Kean, Vice Chair Lee H. Hamilton, and Board Members Richard Ben-Veniste, Fred F. Fielding, Jamie S. Gorelick, Slade Gorton, Bob Kerrey, John F. Lehman, Timothy J. Roemer and James R. Thompson, released their final report on the events of September 11th. Titled, The 9/11 Commission Report, it is a 428-page document accompanied by a 139-page Appendix. It almost perfectly details every second of the worst day of all of our lives, documents in great detail how Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda planned and orchestrated the attacks – and explains the many, many flaws and screw-ups that led to the unfortunate success of the September 11th atrocity.

I got a copy of The Report the day it was released, and have since read it from cover to cover – and in doing so – have come away from it with a sense of embarrassment at America’s pre-9/11 arrogance, a feeling of anger toward my Government for its lack of preparedness and inexcusable miscommunication during those dreadful 102 minutes and the crucial hours thereafter – and complete shock and disbelief at the overwhelming number of warning signs we were given even years in advance – but chose to completely ignore.

Before September 11th, American soil fell victim to only two terrorist attacks – the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 – and the Oklahoma City Bombing on April 19, 1995. But despite those two attacks, which were both horrifying and catastrophic – America still held onto its, “It Can’t Happen Here” attitude. Regardless of threats made by other countries, growing opposition in the East – and credible confirmed threats from known, sworn enemies of America – we continued to shrug our shoulders and snicker in the face of opposition…

…until 8:46:40am on Tuesday, September 11, 2001 – when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center – instantly killing all 92 people on board and an unknown number of innocent civilians inside the Tower – including a 33-year-old man named Douglas Farnum.

From that moment, which I consider to be the biggest turning point in human history so far, our Nation’s Government was shaken to its core. Everyone, from President Bush all the way down, had never faced a threat – or an enemy – like this. Despite all of our training, preparation, and anticipation of terrorism – no sane human being could have possibly predicted the events of September 11th – or what was to come after that tragic Tuesday.

The Report – although unfortunately in hindsight – provides an almost exact blueprint of the September 11th attacks, down to the movements of the 19 hijackers from the very moment they entered the airports – to the first conversation between President Bush and Vice President Cheney following the attack. The Report also chronicles the creation of Al Qaeda from as early as 1979 – as well as Osama Bin Laden’s rise to power – and his history of cowardly attacks against the free world.

While The Report is an interesting read, it is not an easy one. The Report includes painful details of the atrocity, such as the transcripts of the phone calls made by the passengers inside the four doomed planes, like Peter Hanson, who called his father from United Airlines Flight 175 – which hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:03:11am. “It’s getting bad dad,” Peter said to his father in their last conversation. “I think they [the hijackers] intend to go to Chicago or someplace and fly a plane into a building – my God, my God.” With those words and a woman’s scream – the phone call was cut off – because the plane hit the Tower.

As I read The Report, which begins on the morning of September 11th, I read with amazement how the hijackers were able to carry out their sadistic goal with terrifying ease. While some of the hijackers were selected by CAPPS (Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System), which at the time meant having to endure only a more detailed security search – all 19 men passed through airport security without incident. Even more terrifying to me was that as these four planes pushed back from their respective gates and were about to take off into history – just those 19 men and their countless conspirators knew that they were about to do something that would change the world as we knew it forever, while billions of people around the world did not – including the innocent people sitting right next to them.

After detailing the circumstances surrounding the hijacking of the four planes, the report continues into the crucial moments both during and immediately following the attacks – and reveals just how grossly unprepared we were that day. Granted, our Government conducted terrorism drills prior to September 11th and our military personnel underwent very intense training in the event of foreign terror – but the bottom line is that we are not terrorists and prior to September 11th, did not think that a catastrophic atrocity of that magnitude would take place on American soil, and therefore did not know how to deal with one. So when the attack was perpetrated and it was time to act – we were truly caught with our pants down. During the attack, civilians watching on television all over the world knew more of what was happening then our Government’s highest ranking officials. The report details how during those crucial hours, conversations were confusing, information was sporadic – and as a result – mistakes were frequent and reactions were far too late.

While the details of the attacks and the moments following them were tough to read in the report, it is the next few chapters that sicken me the most. Time after time after time, the report shows incidents where we knew there were credible and even lethal threats made against the United States – and chose inaction instead of pro-action.

In May of 1998, ABC Television interviewed Osama Bin Laden. In the interview, he said that Americans are, “the worst thieves in the world and the worst terrorists.” And that the only thing that could stop what he called, “American Terrorism” was, “retaliation in kind…We do not have to differentiate between military or civilian – as far as we are concerned – they [Americans] are all targets.” Three years and four months before September 11th, we heard those words and did nothing but “keep an eye” on Osama Bin Laden “just in case.” The report again shows that on December 4, 1998, President Clinton received his Presidential Daily Briefing, which that day, was entitled, “Bin Laden Preparing To Hijack US Aircraft And Other Attacks.” In the document, it stated that, “two members of [Bin Laden’s] operational team had evaded security checks during a recent trial run at an unidentified New York airport.” Now, we not only knew that Osama Bin Laden hated Americans and wanted to kill us, we had specific evidence that Bin Laden and his followers were planning on using aircraft in their attacks – and still did nothing. And worst of all – Former National Counterterrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke sent, as The Report calls it, “an impassioned personal note” to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that asked, “Are we serious about dealing with the Al Qaeda threat?” In the note, he criticized U.S. counterterrorism efforts and warned that if nothing is done, “decision makers should imagine themselves on a future day when the CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group] has not succeeded in stopping Al Qaeda attacks and hundreds of Americans lay dead…that future day could happen at any time.”

It happened seven days later – because the, “impassioned personal note” was dated September 4, 2001.

From as early as four years before the attacks and as close as one week prior, we had indications that our nation faced a threat worse then anything we had ever faced before. We possessed not a blueprint, but a skeletal framework of what Al Qaeda wanted to do to us and how they planned to carry it out – and we knew of countless attacks that Bin Laden carried out – including the one against the U.S.S. Cole on October 12, 2000 – and did nothing to protect our shores, our skies, our airports, our planes, our buildings – or our citizens. We allowed our self-professed and narcissistic superiority to let a foreign enemy infiltrate every aspect of our then, “Homeland Security” and carry out an attack of unprecedented magnitude on our soil with their only weapons being our planes and our people. And in doing so, we not only paid for our arrogance in blood – we learned the hard way that, “It Can Happen Here.”

I commend the members of the 9/11 Commission for putting together such a comprehensive report that speaks the truth and shows our flaws without politics or prejudice. I also agree with the Commission’s findings that major changes are needed in our Governmental structure – such as Interagency Communication – in order to ready ourselves for whatever lies ahead. As the Report perfectly states in Paragraph Eleven of its Preface, “We need to design a balanced strategy for the long haul, to attack terrorists and prevent their ranks from swelling while at the same time protecting our country from future attacks.”

I hope to God that we do – so there will never be another September 11, 2001 – or another 567-page report telling us what we didn’t do to stop it.