[Madame Dufarge]

It only "altered the landscape" in that it gave the current Bush administration the political support to do something (i.e., invade Iraq and topple the Ba'athist government of that country) that it had every intention of doing anyway.

Good Lord.

Everyone knows he was busy planning Hurricane Katrina at the time.

[Alberta's Child]

The people who were appointed to key positions in the U.S. Department of Defense in early 2001 (i.e., long before 9/11) give a strong indication of exactly what this administration's priorities were in terms of foreign policy.

The appointment of long-time advocates of U.S. military intervention in Iraq to these posts (Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, etc.) was very telling. None of these people had any real expertise in public or private life other than their incessant calls throughout the 1990s for the U.S. to invade Iraq. There wasn't a single expert in U.S.-Chinese relations among them, or a single expert in U.S.-Russian affairs, or even any indication that any of these people knew what al-Qaeda was before 9/11.