More than a year before 9/11, Donald Trump predicted a terror attack on a major American city was inevitable."I really am convinced we're in danger of the sort of terrorist attacks that will make the bombing of the Trade Center look like kids playing with firecrackers," Trump writes in his June 2000 book,"No sensible analyst rejects this possibility, and plenty of them, like me, are not wondering if but when it will happen."Buzz Feed News,, notes Trump was considering a presidential bid on the Reform Party ticket at the time of the book's release.He even points the finger at terror lord Osama bin Laden."One day we're told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin Laden is public enemy number one, and U.S. jet fighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan," Trump writes. "He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it’s on to a new enemy and new crisis."Trump devoted a section of the book to keeping America safe from terrorism, arguing it was the biggest threat to national security."Whatever their motives — fanaticism, revenge — suffice it to say that plenty of people would stand in line for a crack at a suicide mission within America," he writes. "In fact the number of potential attackers grows every day. Our various military adventures — some of which are justified, some not — create new legions of people who would like to avenge the deaths of family members or fellow citizens."Journalist Peter Beinart also defendsfor culpability in the terror attacks — remarks that have caused a firestorm, including from GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush, the president's brother., Beinart acknowledges "There's no way of knowing for sure if Bush could have stopped the September 11 attacks.""But that's not the right question. The right question is: Did Bush do everything he could reasonably have to stop them, given what he knew at the time?"And he didn't."Beinart argues that when Bush took office in January 2001, CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Council counterterrorism "czar" Richard Clarke "both warned its incoming officials that Al Qaeda represented a grave threat."And according to Bob Woodward's 2003 bookTenet and his deputy James Pavitt listed bin Laden as one of America’s three most serious national-security challenges, Beinart writes."But both Clarke and Tenet grew deeply frustrated by the way top Bush officials responded," Beinart writes. "Clarke recounts that when he briefed [Sec. of State Condoleezza] Rice about Al Qaeda, 'her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before.'""By early summer, Clarke was so despondent that he asked to be reassigned," Beinart adds.The CIA also was raising alarms, he writes."According to Kurt Eichenwald, a former New York Times reporter given access to the Daily Briefs prepared by the intelligence agencies for President Bush in the spring and summer of 2001, the CIA told the White House by May 1 that 'a group presently in the United States' was planning a terrorist attack. On June 22, the Daily Brief warned that Al Qaeda strikes might be 'imminent.'""But the same Defense Department officials who discounted Clarke's warnings pushed back against the CIA's.""When Donald Trump hurls insults at his opponents, respectable people generally roll their eyes," Beinart writes. "But it is precisely Trump's refusal to be respectable that helps him spark debates that elites would rather avoid. And sometimes, those debates are important to have.""For many years now, that foreign-policy establishment has insisted that questioning Bush’s failure to stop the September 11 attacks constitutes an outrageous slur," he writes, arguing former Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer's attack on Trump,, is "blurring the line between accusing Bush of having orchestrated the attacks and accusing Bush of having been insufficiently vigilant in trying to stop them. But Bush was insufficiently vigilant. The evidence is overwhelming."