"With 20/20 hindsight of course "
I've long-ago (in this thread) admitted that this is all 20:20 hindsight.
Rather than respond to your well-written-and-intelligent post point-by-point (and I totally see your points, btw), I suggest you do a google search on 9-11 + timeline for more information on other POV of the details of that day.
If 9-11 had occurred under Clintax, we'd all be asking these questions. I'm simply too non-partisan to not ask them myself.
Not to belabor the point, but the President did not have enough information avaiable to respond in a manner that could have reasonably prevented the Pentagon from being struck. Just be thankful our leadership reacted more quickly than the Germans did to the Normandy landings. Despite reports of massive parachute landings and the actual seaborne assaults, German reaction took several hours to be implemented, and in some cases days.
I've been asking where was Bill when the WTC was bombed in 1993, OKC was bombed in 1994, the USS Cole was bombed, the embassies were bombed...
There were a lot of attacks. I don't recall President Clinton going on tv right away after any of them.