Barack Obama showed some stones yesterday.
This shouldn't be news. I suspect the reason it is is the last administration was in woefully short supply of stones, particularly when it made mistakes. "Heckuva job, Brownie!"
After an earlier meeting with his security advisers, President Obama said US intelligence services had enough information to place the Nigerian suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, on a no-fly list, but had failed to connect the dots, adding: "That's not acceptable, and I will not tolerate it".
I should point out that the only person who suffered any consequences of the 9-11 terrorist attacks was Sibel Edmonds. Indeed, the only admission by anyone in authority in the Bush administration with respect to the 9-11 tragedy was from Condi Rice, which she called a "failure of imagination".
As if terrorists bringing four planes down a month after the infamous August 6 PDB was like the release of "Avatar".
But I digress.
President Obama's point yesterday, that we had all the pieces but no one to put the puzzle together, was supposed to be solved by the Department of Homeland Security, set up by "President" Bush and alowed to squander seven years of financing to put on a dog and pony show of protecting Americans' security. We were given rainbows, told tweezers and nail scissors were deadly weapons (perhaps they anticipated an attack by an army of Jackie Chan clones), and asked to buy duct tape and plastic sheeting.
Instead of putting together an infrastructure that would in real time share information between agencies and prevent a lone terrorist from boarding a plane loaded down with explosives. Yes, Bush and his team stopped Richard Reid (for want of a lighter, admittedly on the "no-fly" list. Too bad Reid wasn't.), and then rested on their laurels.
Bush and Rove et al spent those last seven years wetting their pants trying to get us to wet ours, with continual incidents of false flag terror alerts (timed in election cycles, no less).
President Obama's inference, that intelligent people are now running the intelligence services so let's cut the crap, is an even better reaction than expected. Had Abdulmutallab (and I thought Ahmadinejad was hard to spell!) succeeded, I would hope the implication that heads would roll would be carrid out, starting with his own Cabinet pick, Janet Napolitano, who now has to work hard to persuade Americans she can handle what on the surface seems to be a job cut out for her. I'm sure the details are far more complex, however.
2009 was a difficult year for Obama, even tho the end showed glimmers of an administration that can reverse the deep troubles this nation is in. If this kick-off to campaign year 2010 is any indication, this should be a good year for Obama and the Democrats.
Posts
