It is not clear what al Qaeda’s leaders thought would happen in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. Perhaps, judging from recent practice, al Qaeda thought the Bush administration, like some of its predecessors, would conduct a lengthy investigation and be slow to take action. The United States had failed to take significant retaliatory action after other terrorist attacks: the 1983 bombing of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the 1996 Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia, and the bombing of USS Cole in 2000