Who again, is winning the war on terror. Every time we react to something this patently silly, we fairly scream, "LOSERS". The people have paid a lot and will continue paying a lot, while not solving the problem.
I am afraid Bush and company have squandered much of the impetus (righteous anger) of the American people and will come away with little more than the degradation of the GOP and the American reputation.
Since the end of WWII, we have been plagued with an intelligence service that is anything but (yes, even before Clinton/Gorelick) and a determination to do everything possible to not win a war that we so readily enter into.
You're quite wrong, David. Intell has always been a hit or miss enterprise and even the few times in history where intell has been near perfect, it has been misinterpreted.
A good primer on the subject is Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda by John Keegan.
I suspect you will find that the problem with the intelligence services is the same thing that is infecting all of our society -- the rampant proliferation of lawyers and their blind adherence to the letter of the law instead of the spirit. eg.: JAG.
How can you begin to blame the President for this? How would you have expected the police to react to devices that looked like bombs? To do nothing? Even if 9/11 had not happened, the police would have responded in the same way. They would have assumed that these devices were dangerous until it could be proven otherwise.
The President's war strategy has nothing to do with this incident. Instead of bashing Mr. Bush, you should be criticizing Ted Turner.