I disagree. I think it's inexcusable to simply state this was a intelligence failure due to failure to react to world post-cold war. Simply due to the following factual information:

The Cold war was built on the shoulders of relationship with Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan.
They got miffed due to US military presence and the House of Saud.
The American Embassy in Africa bombings.
The 1994 WTC attack.
The CIA and FBI knew of their presence in the country.
Constant threats by Al Qaeda.
Intelligence failure post 9/11 with regards to Iraq.

Honestly all this back and forth about this tape is enough for me.

All I ask is that you don't consider the day, but what that day meant, and where that day has lead us.

The police state you mention we should avoid? We're already there... from Gitmo, arrest without trail, NSA phone taps, heabus corpus, NSA echelon program and so on and so on.

Do you know what the Terrorists want? No, the whitehouse tells us they hate the Western way of life. Or what is it? Islamofacists. No mention of their demands to end to house of Saud, Palestine and so on, i.e. specific grievances but no it degrades at this level to some clash of cultures and religions. Because the Decider has decided that for you.

Does it make logical plausible sense? No, if the intent of Al Qeada was to destroy the western way of life in American the attack would have been on nuclear power stations (check your maps its all there, its not state secrets or anything) around the East coast causing an event the size of Chernobyl. They knew that such an attack would lead to possible usage of nuclear arms against them, they don't seek a war of mutual annihilation, they are at issue with the foreign policy actions of the USA. So did not pursue that action.

In our world of fear due to terrorism, a massive securities and weapons supply chain is developing, the American goverment is spending nigh on billions on futuristic weapon systems that don't coincide with the needs of the US Army currently in Iraq and Afghanistan. The same money that could have been used to rebuild New Orleans which more then a year later is still there in tatters.

Are we safer today then we were before 9/11? No. It's worse. But you know, I guess no one read 1984 and am just paranoid.

You can't really compare the EU and the North American telecommunications market, while this would work in the EU it wouldn't work in North America. Furthermore what you are talking about is still the same methodology of centralized control, by established telcos BT and Virgin Media tackling the old standard model. What I think is different with Joost and such is that they will try to provide actual online content we get on VS.

In the US as well telecommunications and media companies are too closely related and the already too much lax legislation + pork barrel regulation by the FCC and lobby group representation at Washington DC show how Net Neutrality at one point was being sold to consumers as being more expensive for them.

Furthermore media companies, especially Hollywood are too scared to offer their entire catalogs in digital format because Wal-mart which sells 40% of DVDs currently, would not appreciate a open standard digital source for films that would threaten brick and mortar supply chains. So what they did is launch the Wal-mart service, which is restrictive, ridiculously expensive (8 to 20 dollars), and generally crap because of DRM.

However this crappy service will fade quickly as BitTorrent founder Ashwin Navin is announcing its own legal movie distribution network. So far it sounds good, we all know the speed benefits of BT, there will be no DRM, pricing is said to be reasonable and alot of movies will be free supported by ads.

We will see how this develops. Though I still believe there is a place for IPTV content that is not just limited to supplying Hollywood but rather in the style of VS, i.e. sifted video selection channels by categories.

This is highly speculative based on a DOD 2020 reports, books and such?

Now if you read every DARPA and DOD report out there you realize that they are predicting events several years in the future without any real consideration towards economic, political or sociological considerations.

Space militarization cannot really happen, considering that such steps would be immediately countered by China and Russia. All they need to do is basically start selling off dollars switch to Euro's and collapse the US economy into a depression. This is not even considering how much resources, money, research it would require to introduce such a program.

Furthermore throwing all the funds into this program is sheer foolishness. They have already spent billions trying to make these systems work, especially the missile defense system, and derivatives such as the patriot missile system. This plan would be shot down to bits by both sides of the House and Congress not to mention the voting population. This is no longer a world were countries can stay isolationist, everything is depended on information, goods and supply chains. If aggressive actions escalated to tyranny by the USA, it would only bring more terrorist attacks, more attacks that don't use the usual military doctrine... Yes the US military is great in facing a mechanized army, but look how it cannot contain insurgents, and these technologies would only make such warfare all the more acceptable in the eyes of a enemy that cannot resist otherwise. Yes Space domination would mean power all over the world, but it's power at the expense of all the freedoms a society like the US enjoys, just like it came close to post 9/11.

There are no more US military bases in Uzbekistan. American military interests withdrew with the current problems faced in Iraq and tension from the local despotic goverment.

Loftly plans of control of Space echo the ones of controlling the communist domino effect or controlling Vietnam or the containing the problem Middle East. Surely they should understand that even best laid plans never usually work out.... It's hilarious how much totally wrong footage is being used to tell the story (e.g. soviets shown when it was talking about Nazi scientists taken during Op Paperclip, which was more based on the fact that the US saw that the USSR would be an enemy).

And if you are not convinced just look at US national debt numbers.

Tin foil conspiracies, am sorry to say.