It wouldn't help. They'll just pass it to Ai-Queda to let them know who to send the next time.
Posted on 01/03/2010 3:11:18 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
In the days after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's failed attempt to kill himself and bring down Northwest Flight 253, the story followed a familiar pattern.
First, there were the daily revelations of what various intelligence and other government agencies didn't do with what they had already known about Abdulmutallab's behaviour and associations: from his father's effort to alert US officials about his son's radicalisation, to Abdulmutallab's cash purchase of a round trip ticket and his checking in for the flight without luggage - both "red flags" that should have warranted secondary airport screening.
As the full picture emerged, it became clear that some of the same problems that existed prior to 9/11 still plagued the many diverse components of the US's intelligence and law enforcement apparatus. In particular, they were not communicating with one another or sharing critical information with each other. For example, the concerns shared by Abdullmutallab's father with US Embassy staff and the CIA, and the fact that the young man had gone to study in Yemen, were recorded, resulting in Abdumutallab being placed on the large National Counterterrorism Centre's TIDE master list of persons of interest, but not on a "terrorism watch list". Also, the information did not get passed to the Yemeni government or the FBI, nor did it impact his US visa.
It could be argued that this after-the-fact "connecting of the dots" is unfair, since it can be compared to doing a crossword puzzle after looking at the answers, but this matter of "dot connecting" was supposed to have been resolved by provisions of the Patriot Act that encouraged inter-agency intelligence sharing, and by the creation of the Directorate of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Centre that were designed to serve as the "nerve centres" and intelligence clearinghouses facilitating such inter-agency co-operation.
The fact that some of the same problems that haunted the intelligence community pre-9/11 still exist today, eight years after the deadly attacks, caused exasperation among those who had been involved in the reform effort and led a clearly troubled President Obama to declare that there would be accountability for those who had failed.
If the pattern of revelation and recrimination was familiar, so too were the efforts of some to politicise the almost tragic affair. There were calls for Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to resign or be fired, and the charge that this entire episode demonstrates the Obama administration's weakness in dealing with matters of national security. Former vice-president Dick Cheney used the incident to ratchet up his personal attacks against Obama, while GOP Congressional leaders saw an opportunity to attack the President's plan to close Guantanamo.
Fair or unfair, or just "plain politics" there can be no question about the seriousness of what almost occurred on Flight 253. Had Abdulmutallab succeeded in his evil mission, a deadly blow would have been delivered to the nation and a serious challenge to the Obama Presidency. The incident, therefore, must be and will be taken seriously. Overlapping hearings will be held by Congressional committees, a full scale administrative review will be conducted looking into what happened and what didn't happen.
In the meantime, travellers will once again endure time consuming checks. We now know that airport security remains vulnerable and that new threats cannot be adequately combated by procedures currently in use. We also know that post-9/11 reforms have not been fully implemented and that there are weaknesses in our "list" making and the use made of these lists.
There have already been calls for more extensive use of "profiling", an overly broad expansion of the "no-fly" lists and a lowering of the threshold of what constitutes sufficient grounds to be placed on the terrorism "watch list", and more extensive use of more sophisticated scanning equipment that some have complained are highly intrusive, in that they create a virtual "strip search" image of passengers. Some of the proposals are but a worn out rehashing of the kind of alarmist and bigoted ideas that surfaced after 9/11.
But there will, no doubt, be a healthy and needed debate on all these efforts, with civil libertarians, lawmakers and law enforcement professionals seeking the right balance in the remedies needed to correct the weaknesses in our security. It will be important and worth following closely, since its consequences will shape our lives for years to come.
******
jzogby@aaiusa.org
agreed
Zogby is a muslim like Hussein.
Geeze, who has time for stuff like this.
Between planning vacations, taking vacations, planning parties, having parties, having date night, planning a garden, planting a garden, coming out with the revelation, about three weeks later, that the crops contain lead, having photo ops shopping for veggies at an outdoor market, having photo ops while feeding the poor, being on TV almost daily, being on the radio almost daily, flying all over the world with my family on mini vacations while on supposed Federal Government business takes up quite a few hours every day.
Some things just have to be put on the back burner, like national security and the economy while I’m enjoying being “The One”.
The lack of profiling of Muslims is the single most important failure of airline and other areas of security ever since we noticed Muslims were at war with us. Since all attacks against US interests have been by Muslims (the sole exception being Timothy McVey who, unlike Muslim terrorists, was executed for his crime,)it does not take Sherlock Holmesian deduction to determine who to scrutinize.
Not true, Dr Zogby. I've canceled my January business trips to avoid these time-consuming checks. I'll teleconference without the pat-downs, thank you very much.
For the majority portion of my life, I was NEVER a bigot.
As a matter of fact, I was accepting ,to a fault, of other people's differences.
As a child I was raised NOT to prejudge anybody, but to let each person prove themselves as individuals.
As a young teen, I held Dr. Martin Luther King as one of my cherished heroes.
However, in the past ten years, I have been called a bigot, a racist, a homophobe, an Islamophobe, and worse merely because I see with my own eyes, hear with my own ears, and form opinions based on my own observations.
This could very easily become a self-fulfilling prophesy if they don't CUT IT THE HELL OUT!
In the meantime:
I feel that if we continue to support this rediculous system by continuing to fly we are asking to be killed by a terrorist. STOP FLYING until someone in charge takes the threat seriously. Flying to get somewhere is still a luxury we can do without. I will fly when it says, on my ticket, that I have the right to use any means, including firearms, to protect myself and my loved ones in case of a terrorist takeover attempt. So should we all. They say, “But, if we stop flying, the terrorists will have won”. That’s rediculous. They’ve won when we are herded like cattle to board death missles.
Please raise your hand if you think that will help.
Is it just me—or does passing along to the Yemeni government our list of all watched/suspected terrorists seem like not a great idea?
How pathetic that Zogby isn't even honest enough to discuss the actual relevance of the Obama administration's foolish missteps in handling Guantanamo detainees to the handling of the aftermath of this nearly-successful terrorist attack, and instead trivializes it as politics-as-usual...
With the discovery of even more facts about this entire episode unfolding right before our eyes, the breach of security is even more devastating than ever before. Janet Napolitano should be fired immediately and replaced with somebody who is an actual expert on terrorism tactics. Maybe this adminisrearion will hire Osama. After all that seems to be their level of intelligence and competence. And the weak response by this administration is putting the American flying public at great risk. Their providing a false sense of security does not help either.
It wouldn't help. They'll just pass it to Ai-Queda to let them know who to send the next time.
>>>Had Abdulmutallab succeeded in his evil mission, a deadly blow would have been delivered to the nation and a serious challenge to the Obama Presidency.<<<
Actually, I think that the mission was to show how lame the security is on the airlines. Had the crotchbomber gone into the bathroom to light up, the plane would have been blown out of the sky. Once the mission to demonstrate inept security was accomplished, the Islamofascists could be assured that the Americans would argue and blame themselves into knots, all the while learning more about the weaknesses of the enemy.
My other opinion: we need to be on the offensive, and yes, Mr. Zogby, that means profiling Islamic visitors and residents - not races and ethnicity. If you’re an Arab Christian, take the car pool lane through security. If you’re a recent Islamic convert from Sweden, expect a colonoscopy. I’d also make it clear that any attack on American soil by Islamic people will be responded to by an elite commando unit taking a certain black rock from the middle of public square in Mecca and sending it to the bottom of the Mariana Trench - or hoisting it into the sun, since you could conceivably recover it from the ocean floor.
I think we’ll have to live through the Obama interregnum first, though. I’m with you, though. If Islam wants to make it their mission to kill me or convert me, they had better expect me to do whatever it takes to preserve my liberty. Tolerance is not a suicide pact.
Exactly.
We travelled to Israel to visit early this year. Our son was studying in Europe and was to fly from Rome and meet us in Tel Aviv, then fly back to the US. He had a one-way ticket into Israel on El Al. We changed our departure by a day and changed his ticket, but his itinerary in hand showed a different flight out a day earlier, so Lufthansa did not show him on the flight. He was very politely questioned for about two hours. I imagine in this time, Israeli security talked to his school and whoever else could confirm his identity. We flew to Rapid City South Dakota recently with his 88 year old grandmother. The TSA was extremely interested in her person and her carry on luggage. We live in Wonderland folks.
Is it bigoted if a muslim profiles Americans to kill? Is it time to turn that table back on all the people who claim discrimination? If they choose to try him in a civil court, it has to be a hate crime.
And I'm not so sure about that 'sole exception...'
That is an odd way to describe it, it sounds more like a failed suicide attempt, by a troubled teen that was looking for headlines.
I wonder if Zogby checked with the mothers of the murdered soldiers at Fort Hood... asked how they felt about monsters being protected by PC thinking... and if it was worth the lives of their children.
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