The uproar over the briefings President George W. Bush had prior to the Sept. 11 attacks seems in some circles to be unfairly focused on the question of whether Bush and his cabinet should have “connected the dots” to prevent the attacks from occurring. The real question is why he waited so long to come clean about those briefings.

It is implausible that from a vague briefing and a few documents in reams of memos the government could have predicted that on an autumn Tuesday morning, hijackers would turn civilian airplanes into potent weapons and kill thousands of people in New York, the Pentagon, and rural Pennsylvania.

Alerting Americans in advance of such a vague threat would not have accomplished anything. Without a time, place or method, most people would have ignored the threat. At the time, the possibility of a terrorist attack on American soil seemed very remote in most citizens’ minds.

But how soon should the American people have been advised of the knowledge, however indistinct, that such terrorist activities were considered latent threats? We were told in the months following the attacks that they were a total shock and a complete surprise. The Bush administration characterized Sept. 11 as unthinkable, and we believed that.

Under the guise of shock, the administration enjoyed considerable political support, receiving unquestioning financial assistance from Congress in the weeks and months following the attacks.

Still, the Bushies were silent. Why? Good question.

Not only is it wrong in principle to tell the country the attacks were a complete surprise, it was a political failure that could further facilitate attacks on America.

Had Bush been honest, he could have used that dissent-free mourning period to speak frankly about the shortcomings of American intelligence and push for the real change that has still not happened. The Federal Bureau of Intelligence still can’t send classified e-mails to the Central Intelligence Agency. The turf wars remain.

If Bush had struck while the iron was hot, maybe that wouldn’t be. Maybe he could have pressured the FBI, CIA and other federal agencies to give up their decades-old bickering and get on the same page. Maybe we’d be that much closer to thwarting the next terror attempt.

The Bush administration could not have stopped Sept. 11, but their reticence to disclose what was known until much later is not acceptable. It’s not a matter of what could have been done to stop Sept. 11. It’s a matter of what wasn’t done to stop the next attack. Bush should have known better.

Editorial Board: Dave Roepke, Erin Randolph, Charlie Weaver, Megan Hinds, Rachel Faber Machacha