[Dead-Air]

He'd have told everyone it saddened him deeply and it was a terrible loss like any president, but I think he probably would have made a speech that brought the whole world into the picture as the victim rather than isolating the U.S. This was the "World Trade Center" after all, and there were plenty of people that died who weren't Americans, yet the Bush administration took it as an opportunity to get flags waving and blank checks for ass kicking. I think Obama would be a smarter breed of opportunist who would have made effective use of how the whole world felt bad for the U.S. and not turned the whole world against us so quickly.

I'm sure he would have blamed the attack on the last Republican administration in office the way Bush's cronies tried to pin it on the Clinton administration. I don't think Obama is a saint who wouldn't do that stuff or he wouldn't be currently rising to the top of the partisan politics heap. Odds are he's going to have a Sam Nunn or Wesley Clarke VP and if not and it's Richardson, he'll have somebody along those lines very top gun in his administration, and yes that would have led to going into Afghanistan, but certainly not Iraq. He probably would actually have made a serious effort to strengthen alliances with several moderate Islamist countries, and you can be sure he wouldn't have been throwing the word "Crusade" around.

Would he have gotten Bin Laden? There I have my doubts. Unlike Bush, he wouldn't have badly wanted old family friend Bin Laden out there keeping the sheep focused on being afraid enough to trust the wolves to guard them at home. But I don't think Obama is likely to have very good luck controlling the CIA anymore than Carter did (or for that matter Kennedy did!) There was a reason that the attempt to rescue the Iranian hostages covertly in Carter's day didn't work, the CIA didn't want them out until Reagan had won. The fundamentalist Christians and the fundamentalist Islamists and the right wing spooks and the anti-American terrorists, they all need each other, and they know it. It's hard to have an Armageddon when nobody will play with you.