Inside 9/11

I just watched part of the "Inside 9/11" mini-series on the National Geographic channel. They seem to be trying to make the point that the US should have known that 9/11 was going to happen because they knew bin Laden was plotting terrorist attacks against the U.S. At one point a terrorist was caught who was planning to crash commercial airlines into the World Trade Center and CIA headquarters. The government should have connected the two, right? Wrong. They didn't know that the airline plot terrorist's uncle got away and started working with bin Laden; they thought that plot was taken care of.

Even if they could find out specifics of other attacks, such as how they might be carried out, which is unlikely (how do they know the terrorists aren't just leaking information to distract from another plot?), it would be extremely difficult to find out the suspects, or when the attacks would happen. I have serious doubts all of the little details could have been discovered and connected in order to find out exactly what was going on. Even if they caught the ringleader, another terrorist would have taken over the plot. The terrorist networks are just so intricate and dynamic, it would be incredibly difficult to get them all figured out. It's silly to say that such a thing as 9/11 could have been prevented. I'm betting that a good portion of the facts presented in this documentary were not known or connected until after 9/11. Hindsight is 20/20. Now they can make the connections, but how would they have known what connections to make beforehand?