Would George W. Bush have been reelected president if the public understood how much responsibility his administration bears for allowing the 9/11 attacks to succeed?

Yet it was appalling to learn last week that the White House suppressed until after the election a damning report that exposes the administration as woefully incompetent if not criminally negligent. Belatedly declassified excerpts from still-secret sections of the 9/11 commission report, which focus on the failure of the Federal Aviation Administration to heed multiple warnings that Al Qaeda terrorists were planning to hijack planes as suicide weapons, make clear that this tragedy could have been avoided.

Fifty-two of those summaries mentioned bin Laden or al Qaeda, and five discussed hijacking "as a capability al Qaeda was training for or possessed."

Two summaries cited suicide operations, "but not connected to a threat in aviation," the report said.

The commission found no evidence that the FAA knew what al Qaeda was plotting -- hijacking planes and using them as missiles -- but the agency had at least considered "the possibility that terrorists would hijack a plane and use it as a weapon," the report said.