Flawed. An excellent reminder from TalkingPoints, that to the extent voters vote on the national security issue- the question is this: how do we identify and take on threats? From the start of of this administration, the perceived threat was rogue nations bearing WMDs. Hence, the rebooted star wars program. Marshall notes:

Now in a front page piece in Thursday's Washington Post we learn that on September 11th, 2001 Condi Rice was scheduled to deliver a major foreign policy address on missile defense as the centerpiece of a new strategy to combat "the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday."

Then reality intruded.

As the Post explains, the speech contained little real discussion of terrorism. The only mentions were swipes at the Clinton administration's supposed over-emphasis on transnational terrorism at the expense of more important priorities like missile defense.

Marshall goes on to note what is obvious now:

the most potent threats to America are asymmetric threats, particularly forms of attack that cannot easily be tied back to particular states which we can punish with our conventional military superiority.

In plainer speech, the biggest threats we face today are ones that don't come with a return address.

But here is what is most important, and why this post from Marshall ought to be highlighted.

In any case, this is just another example that they simply failed to understand where the real threat was coming from.

That in itself is forgivable. The problem is that they tried to shoehorn 9/11 into their existing paradigm rather than rethink that flawed analysis.