Thread by @politico

In the hours and days after the attacks on 9/11, the consensus was that more deadly attacks were coming.

20 years later, the architects of the U.S. response can look back with relief that another large-scale attack on American soil never took place.
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But that fact has often been used as a blanket justification for many of the most far-reaching, controversial and even harmful decisions made in the aftermath of the attacks.
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The vast expansion of the surveillance state. Covert operations to kill or capture suspected terrorists, and in some cases torture them. The invasion first of Afghanistan, where the attacks were planned, and then Iraq, where they were not.
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We asked 17 of the most prominent players of the post-9/11 world to reflect on the wars they helped wage and the defenses they helped erect.

Together, their testimony offers a collection of unfiltered perspectives never before gathered in one place.
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