It all depends on what you mean by "predicted."

You all remember, once upon a time, how no one could have predicted 9/11, right? How no one could have imagined that terrorists would actually use jet airliners as weapons, right? It was just inconceivable, right?

Well ... funny story. But don't worry -- it's not like anyone lied or anything.

BONUS ENTERTAINMENT: Oh, dear. This is what happens when you're dumb as a sack of hammers. The first anonymous commenter below figures to lay the blame for all of this at Bill Clinton's doorstep:

Hmm... 3 years before 9/11/01. June of 1998 (according to the article). That would be during Clinton's term. Did he do anything about the warning? Of course not. For TWO AND A HALF YEARS, he sat on this warning and did nothing to make air travel more secure. Just think, had he actually gotten off his bloated butt, 9/11 might never have happened.

Ah, but of course 9/11 is President Bush's fault, right? He had all of those 8 months between his inauguration and 9/11 to do what Clinton failed to do in TWO AND A HALF YEARS.

Thanks, liberals. Real fricking great.

Yeah, doggone it. It's not like the Clinton administration could have done anything useful like, say, warn the incoming Bush administration about this. Oh, wait:

Clarke, who is to testify today before the independent commission looking into the attacks, said in a telephone interview that CIA Director George J. Tenet used his morning briefings to warn Bush "over and over" beginning in June 2001 that al Qaeda would "almost certainly" stage a major attack. Clarke said the CIA believed it was "most likely" to occur overseas. "Virtually every day, George Tenet said to him: There's an impending al Qaeda attack," Clarke said. "You know the old Shakespearean line -- I think they doth protest too much. They're guilty of not having done enough."

Or perhaps there's this little gem:

When the Bush administration took over in 2001 and decided to reduce Clarke’s power, Coll writes what Clarke this week told the 9/11 committee: He tried to warn Bush officials that terrorism was a major threat, but they ignored his pleas.

And, of course, it was Bush's own National Security Advisor Condi Rice who dismissed a memo entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike inside US" as not a warning but just a "historical document." So you see? It really is all Bill Clinton's fault.

You know what I want for Christmas? A dumbfuck filter for my comments section. That would be so cool. But I'll probably just get socks again.