Posted on 01/07/2010 3:47:01 AM PST by Red in Blue PA
Americans will feel "a certain shock" when a report is released today detailing the intelligence failures that could have prevented the alleged Christmas Day airline bomber from ever boarding the plane.
In an interview published Thursday in USA Today, White House national security adviser James Jones said President Obama "is legitimately and correctly alarmed that things that were available, bits of information that were available, patterns of behavior that were available, were not acted on."
"That's two strikes," he was quoted as saying, referring to the failed Northwest jet attack and the shooting massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, in November. The Army base attack left 13 dead after officials failed to act on intelligence identifying suspected gunman Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as a threat to fellow soldiers.
Jones, a retired four-star Marine general, told the paper that Obama "certainly doesn't want that third strike, and neither does anybody else."
Elaborating, Jones said, "The man on the street ... will be surprised that these correlations weren't made" between clues pointing toward a threat from Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Even though the 23-year-old Nigerian man was in a database of possible terrorists, he managed to fly from Nigeria through Amsterdam to Detroit with an explosive concealed on his body.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
“They must have found a way to blame this on the Bush administration. But no finger pointing!”
That would be a lie, funny, but a big lie, after 9/11 the Bush Administration kept us all preety much safe. There were a few issues, but none like these recent events.
We’ll be shocked alright. Just like we are shocked to find out politicians lie.
As Harry Truman once said so aptly, “The Buck Stops Here!!!”. If any American with half a brain thinks that POTUS Barack Obama is protecting America and Americans then they are smoking funny stuff or drinking far too mauch Kool Aid. Thbe real culprits here, starting at the top, are POTUS Barack Hussein Obama (the America destroyer), Janet Napolitano (The clueless of the clueless) and John Brennen (As dumb as one can be)!!! All of these three folks should be immediately fired by the American people with the Democrat Party taking the lead by insisting on their resignations, and less that action, impeaching them. The enemies of America are now supercharged and enegized to the maximum, so I pray for America and Americans every single moment of the day. Unfortunately American voters have put themselves in a position where under the leadership of POTUS Barack Hussein Obama, we are all in harm’s way every single day he remains in office!!!
They already have...
Anti-Terror Official Stayed on Ski Trip After Learning of Failed Bomb Plot
He's a Bush appointee.
I agree with your sentiments 100%. The way our nation treats its veterans is more than a disgrace, it’s criminal.
After a whole year of pulling the most outrageous stunts it’s going to take quite something to get me truly shocked.
Is he going to raise the bar here? Can he possibly outdo himself in stupidity? Can he? Will he?
Yes, he can.
It’s just that simple.
That's the real bottom line. H$ll, Major Hasan was even on the Obama Transistion Team (albeit in a minor role).
When the boss prohibits the aggressive profiling of muslims and discourages the robust identification, investigation, and prosecution of terrorists, the system will either naturally operate in a suboptimal manner OR NOT OPERATE AT ALL.
This is all Obama's fault!
everything that is carried onto plane goes through the boarding x-ray machine on the belt. That could incorporate a sniffer to detect any problem substances such as drugs, explosives, etc.
Yeah but with the BO administration it’s “The CHANGE stops here!”
Ditto.
How about school buses? How about 20 simultaneously? That would really freak people out.
WH National Security Adviser James Jones: “...he managed to fly from Nigeria through Amsterdam to Detroit with an explosive concealed on his body.”
Maybe, maybe not. Jones may well have solid info that has not been publicly disclosed, but so far, we only know that Mutallab had explosives on his person at the time the plane descended to Detroit.
Prior to that descent, Mutallab spent a lot of time in the bathroom. Based on what we’ve seen in apparent dry runs over the years—of which we probably know of only a portion—with their focus on holing up in lavatories, I am not so sure that Mutallab’s package started out in Nigeria ready-to-go. In fact, it seems an unnecessary risk to put all the marbles on this one man getting onto three different planes with the payload.
Presumably, the plotters would not have been certain that Mutallab would sail through three boardings and that intel was not connecting the dots. I’m inclined to think they divvied up the components among several couriers for later assembly using a combination of passengers or airline employees that would not have triggered scrutiny in the way Mutallab might be expected to.
One thing we need to know is why Holder got the undie bomber to a lawyer so fast. He was talking ond we might have gotten some good info...or was that the concern? The lawyer got him to shut up.
“”””We know what happened, we know what didn’t happen, and we know how to fix it,” Jones, a retired four-star Marine general, said in an interview in his West Wing office. “That should be an encouraging aspect. We don’t have to reinvent anything to make sure it doesn’t happen again.””””””
8 years after 911 and we still are bumbling around in the dark.
Obama, Holder, and Jones better pray that there is not a terrorist attack in NYC during the terrorist trials. If that happens, they are toast. It is incredible to believe that they will take such a risk, but ideology and stupidity trump common sense.
“Fund their own security”? And how is that going to affect their bottom line? Companies that want to cut costs and ticket prices by skimping on expensive security searches would pose a threat to all of us.
Moreover, who cleans up the mess if their security precautions fail? If a plane blows up upon landing at an airport, it won’t be the airline that has to pay for the cleanup - it will be the taxpayer. Same with a plane flown into a building ... would American Airlines have been able to assume all the costs of the WTC attack? They would just have reorganized under bankruptcy laws and walked away from the mess.
It would be very intriguing, though, to see how successful an airline which boasted “No onerous s3wecurity lines and searches!” did in attracting customers.
Oh, I see, you want SOCIALIZED airline security.
Somebody pays for the existing system, in this case it's taxpayers. People used to call such things "subsidies" but I guess when it comes to government providing security for a private business that is losing money we all have to chip in.
Companies that want to cut costs and ticket prices by skimping on expensive security searches would pose a threat to all of us.
As to whether they would chisel, it's up to their insurers to decide whether cheesy cockpit doors are a bad idea. But since we had the FAA said they're just fine, you bought that risk and we paid $12 BILLION to the airlines when the FAA system inevitably failed and billions more for a hapless and incompetent agency buying boondoggle equipment that teaches the public to accept an outrageous invasion of privacy. The public didn't howl when they disarmed pilots either.
How well did that work?
Frankly, if air travel is that risky then people will select other modes that don't have such a high cost of risk ONLY if the cost is in the ticket. Internet meetings or taxi services would be a better risk and those industries would develop instead. They have their risks too, such as EMP or blowing up bridges. If they had to fund it via insurance, then the insurers would compete to invest in businesses that lower the cost of the risk. It would be profitable.
This is how markets work to solve real problems. When we go to coercive political solutions we get systems that fail at outrageous cost to both economy, liberty, and security.
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