Certainly the terrorists themselves, and those who orchestrated the foul deed. And those who knowingly give them save harbor, of course. But therein lies the rub. Sure there were some words that were picked up in hindsight, but nobody would ever suspect that the generalized words spoken in a strip club by two drunken men would translate into the carnage that followed just hours later. Much like everything else about the new millennium, how we deal with war needs to be reconsidered.
Terrorism is nothing new.
The Boston Tea Party was considered to be a terrorist act. Adolph Hitler used the terrorist torching of the Reichstad to secure his absolute control over Germany in the early 1930's. Terrorism was used in the Vietnam conflict as a way to disrupt American forces there. But terrorism has gone from being the disruptive side effect of war to being the prime instrument of war. Fear and terror have become the weapons of choice, not just by countries, but by small groups of people bent on disrupting everyday life.