Now more than seven-and-a-half years later, the US has been sidelined from pursuing bad guys and instead is on a quagmire-like, downward spiral via a couple of savage sinkholes.
Although a military strike into Afghanistan appeared to be logical move in the fall of 2001, original intent had been Iraq.

• “We will definitely have to draw down in Iraq,” he said. But he was reluctant to give a date, saying “the size of our force will come down when the Iraqi Army is capable of defending itself.”
  However, he sees no light at the end of the Afghanistan tunnel.
  “We have a lot further to go there than in Iraq,” he said. “We’ll be there for the long haul.”
  — Gen. George W. Casey Jr., US Army chief of staff, Knight Ridder Newspapers, (4/22/08)

Launched Oct. 7. 2001, the war in Afghanistan has morphed into a long-term nightmare. After all reserved resources of the US military were required to halt the spreading horror of Iraq, the conflict to subdue the Taliban, find Osama bin Laden and put “democracy” in power has slipped backward in time.
Lessons learned in Iraq find pupils in Afghanistan:

• A spate of suicide bombings and other attacks on security forces in southern Afghanistan Wednesday left 13 people dead and 24 others wounded, officials said.
  In Kandahar province, a suicide bomber blew himself up next to a vehicle carrying intelligence agents in the border town of Spin Boldak, killing three civilians, Kandahar Gov. Assadullah Khalid said.
  Two children and three intelligence agents were among the 14 hurt, Khalid said.
  Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the insurgent group was behind the attack and identified the bomber as a man named Gul Mohammad.
  A 16-year-old boy who was wounded in the explosion said police shot at the bomber before he detonated explosives.
  …
  More than 900 policemen were among the 8,000 people killed last year in insurgency-related violence, officials said. The high death toll comes despite some $4 billion the U.S. has spent to train and equip the police in the last three years.
  — Noor Khan, Associated Press, (4/23/08)

In the autumn of 2001, Decider George wasn’t Decider George. He was President Bush.
We hadn’t then much of a true inkling of his actual character — we had no idea the man was a complete incompetent, arrogant asshole.

However, we sure-as-shit should have known.
The following a British look at the US head of state a couple of days after the World Trade Center/Pentagon attacks:

• President Bush was still struggling yesterday to come to terms with how to lead and unify the nation.
  When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, Franklin D Roosevelt struck just the right note when he spoke of a “day of infamy.”
  After the Oklahoma bombing six years ago, Bill Clinton’s eloquent and heartfelt response showed that he could rise to the occasion during a national crisis.
  …
  Mr Bush was not helped by the confusion surrounding him after he left Florida, where he had been about to deliver a speech at an elementary school. “I, unfortunately, will be going back to Washington after my remarks,” he told his audience.
  …
  In the crucial first hours when the nation began to look to him for reassurance and a sense of unity, Mr Bush appeared stunned and uncertain. There was a sense of panic around him as he was flown across the country instead of being returned to the capital.
  …
  It was not until the evening that it touched down at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington.
  By that time, the lost hours immediately after the biggest national catastrophe for 50 years had made Mr Bush’s task as president all the more difficult, even as Americans joined together to rally around him.
  — telegraph.co.uk/news, (Sept. 13, 2001)

And the key phrase, a notion Decider George “appeared stunned and uncertain,” seems about right for the little chickenshit.
Dufus Dick Cheney, Decider George’s able number one, another yellow-bellied, let-the-other-guy-and/or-his-children-die-for-me warrior: He was hunkered down in a deep pit somewhere in Washington, D.C., as the tale of Sept. 11 unfolded across US TV screens.
No one has reported how Dufus Dick appeared, but most-likely piss-his-pants scared.
Dufus Dick, by far, is the brains of this two-muled, trainwreck of a presidency — if brains is the right word, maybe more the ‘asshole soul’ (but that’s a mouthful) — and he started near-immediately building the infrastructure to completly deface the world.

One has to give the boys credit: they moved pretty fast.
Just in his second week, the-then-President Bush created a so-called energy task force, officially known as the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) with Dufus Dick as its boiler head.
Since Dufus Dick had his slick fingers all over big oil and big construction firms like Halliburton, it was only fair all the fat cats get their share.
A near-complete secret operation, though some details were eventually leaked to the press, and via a couple of lawsuits, Dufus Dick and his task force never had to account to anyone and anybody.
According to” the Washington Post, Dufus Dick met in early 2001 with executives from the oil and gas industries, including Anadarko Petroleum’s Robert Allison and then-Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay: All the king’s gold lay at their feet.

Oil and all its subsidiary connections and industries was the goal of the task force.
Iraq had the oil.
A pressing need was to get to the oil in Iraq.

History can be real cute at times, horrifyingly cute. The attacks in New York, Washington and in a quiet Pennsylvania pasture was the linchpin for Iraq.
And like spoiled boys, Decider George and Dufus Dick, aided and abetted by Big Don Rumsfeld, along with a giant host of other incompetent assholes, abandoned Afghanistan for the ultimate toy: Iraq and its oil.

And now a double quagmire when no one in either Afghanistan or Iraq greeted the US as liberators.

• “Go fuck yourself.”
  — Dufus Dick to Sen. Patrick Leahy during an angry exchange on the US Senate floor. Leahy was asking about profiteering by Halliburton (June 25, 2004)