Americans are often victims of their own imaginations, allowing inconceivable ideas to creep into their minds. Such was the case with Pearl Harbor, when conspiracy theorists claimed Franklin D. Roosevelt ignored warnings about the attack, creating a reason to enter World War II.

No doubt someone of the same conspiracy capacity is now suggesting the Bush administration ignored warnings of Sept. 11 so it could wage war on the Taliban and, ultimately, against Iraq and its “weapons of mass destruction.”

These conspirational thoughts may be nothing more than theories, but one fact has become clear during the Sept. 11 commission hearings: The Bush administration actively ignored warnings about terrorism, and result was the loss of 3,000 civilians.

After grilling by the Sept. 11 Commission, it is obvious through Condoleezza Rice’s testimony that our government was (and is?) inept at dealing with terrorist threats. A briefing was provided to the president one month and five days before the World Trade Center towers toppled, and obviously no action was taken.

More upsetting is our national security adviser’s ignorance of her own job. Rice knew in early 2001 of al-Qaida threats on the U.S. soil. Did she tell President Bush of these threats prior to the Aug. 6 briefing? According to her own testimony, she can’t remember doing so.

This is not to say Rice is incompetent, although the accusation has been made since her testimony. Rice actually suffers from something much worse than a lack of intelligence — she is dismissive. She dismissed her duty to inform Bush on matters of national security and she was dismissive of the briefing that finally informed Bush of the imminent danger of attacks in the United States.

The brief warned of activities in line with plotting to hijack airplanes. Rice claimed the document was “historical” information, which is why it was largely ignored. But how is a document that states there have been “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks” since 1998 historical?

Of course, there has never been an attack so coordinated that four planes were hijacked and crashed simultaneously. And there was no real precedent for an attack on civilians of this magnitude. It is not unreal for the concept of such an atrocity to be ignored.

On the other hand, it is the job of the federal government to protect its citizens. The Bush administration failed. Whether it believed the “historical” information in the Aug. 6 memo was plausible or not, the dismissal of its possibility left the United States open for the defining tragedy of our generation.