Pelosi examines the intertwined events of 9/11, the Iraq War, and the war in Afghanistan. She concludes that US actions were a strategic failure that damaged the country. Many of these failures were the result of failures of leadership, especially in the administration of George W. Bush.

Organized by Osama bin Laden, the attacks against the US on September 11th, 2001, were successful terrorist actions because of failures of intelligence. Through her role in bipartisan investigations, Pelosi and others discovered that intelligence and law enforcement agencies missed key indicators of the coming attack because there was no mechanism for agencies to share intelligence. Pelosi was prepared to help lead these investigations because of her deep experience with intelligence matters in her committee work, and through her travels to multiple countries as part of congressional delegations.

The nation went to war against the Taliban, the terrorist insurgency group led by bin Laden in Afghanistan, in retaliation for 9/11, even as the Bush administration stymied efforts to investigate the causes of these failures. Pelosi believes the administration dragged its feet in acting on the reports out of Congress because the Bush administration was rushing to war with Iraq. Pelosi believes that key administration officials misled the American people, Congress, and the Senate in the lead-up to the war in Iraq.