Botched Attack Revives Scrutiny Of Bush Intelligence Reforms

The Washington Post:

The failure of U.S. authorities to detect a plot to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day has reignited long-simmering concerns that intelligence reforms implemented five years ago remain inadequate to prevent terrorist attacks.

With disaster aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 averted by the bomb's malfunction, rather than by astute analysis of available information, some intelligence officials have suggested that the reforms were the cause of such lapses and not the solution to them.

Read the whole story: The Washington Post

Comments

[BlueSkyPilot]

01:15 PM on 01/08/2010

Wasp is a 1957 science fiction novel by English author Eric Frank Russell.

If a small insect, such as a wasp, buzzing around in a car could so distract the driver as to cause that vehicle to crash, possibly causing a chain reaction of multiple crashes and numerous injuries and deaths. Think of what havoc one properly trained operative could wreak on an unsuspecting enemy and the cause, the wasp, may never be found.

Notable author of the Discworld series of fantasy books, Terry Pratchett, stated that he "can't imagine a funnier terrorists' handbook."

[4KixAfter6]

11:50 AM on 01/08/2010

Bush and Intelligence should never ever be used in the same sentence.

[AnnfromCA]

08:48 AM on 01/08/2010

We can't have it both ways. Either we release and see this happen or we don't.

[surferbuoy]

11:59 AM on 01/08/2010

Exactly. This is one of those lose, lose situations. The trick is decided which option is the safest.

[morgan1]

05:57 AM on 01/08/2010

This is another excuse being used to keep Gitmo open, rendition and torture continued to create more terrorists. MSM at various times have given statistics showing 1 in 50 was a threat to all are a threat that were held, or are currently being held. Most have no place to go for no country will take them which indicates all were scooped up innocently and held without charges for years, tortured and submitted to depraved conditions. I believe the latest number released are 10 are a super danger to the entire planet. If that happened to me, I would want justice any way I could get it. If I were innocent, that would definitely sway me to become a freedom fighter. Trust me, the WH and their war minions know this and like it.

[iMissMollyIvins]

02:08 AM on 01/08/2010

Who could have foreseen...

[ThankGodhesgone]

12:23 AM on 01/08/2010

Dick - You are awfully quiet tonight.

[RJC]

04:02 PM on 01/07/2010

Let's stop with the outlandish claims on both sides. The problem isn't that Bush had to release some Gitmo detainess, because there is no doubt he had to. The reason he had to release them, and the rest will also have to be released or properly tried is because of the extra-legal way they were captured, detained, interrogated, and held without due process. Once we embarked on a path of legal and ethical breaches, we were caught in a web of our own making. I don't blame any released Gitmo detainee for subsequently engaging in terrorist activity against the US. If any government, including my own, treated me or my family members in the manner the US has treated these detainees, I would probably spend the rest of my life fighting that govt. The offenses include unlawful capture, rendition,detention, torture, no due process, isolation, etc. Many people captured by us were dangerous and should have been treated asPOWs, or as criminals with access to lawyers and information needed to mount a defense in prescribed time frames. If found credibly guilty, I have no problem with long sentences or even execution. Many of the detainees however were sold to us for bounty, or by political and personal enemies. Regardless if they wer guilty or innocent, I don't blame them for fighting us.

[morgan1]

05:58 AM on 01/08/2010

Well said. I couldn't have said it any better.

[WornOut]

03:54 PM on 01/07/2010

Enough with the blame game already. This just proves that the system is completely flawed. It was flawed under Bush and it's still flawed today.

We can put all the security measures in the world in place but unless we have qualified people in place to implement them it's a complete waste of time. The only thing we get is more restrictions on the average person and no real security. It's all an illusion.

Now we have talk about the reason we're not safe is because we don't have body scanners. Those body scanners will me manned by the same unqualified screeners we have now.

The reason Israel has such great security is because the people are qualified. The security personnel at our airports are a joke. Do you really think they give a damn?

What will happen when the terrorists just decide to start detonating their bombs in the airports while waiting in the enormous lines before the scanners.

Enough with the reactionary security measures. It's just to make us think they are keeping us safe.

[surferbuoy]

12:24 PM on 01/08/2010

To be honest I am surprised that someone hasn't walked into the baggage claim area & blown themselves & several hundred other up yet. There is no security there, at least at LAX & O'Hara Field or Miami for that matter (only three I have recently flown into.) I saw one guard with a dog at O'Hara & that was it...beside once in the door it's too late to stop them.

[senatortruth]

03:22 PM on 01/07/2010

Buhs and Cheeney implemented ALMOST NONE of the security recommendations by the 9/11 Commission.

They also flew the Bin Ludens out on 9/12 and exposed a CiiA Spiy...

TREEZINUS!!

[Chris]

03:17 PM on 01/07/2010

This posting reminds me alot of the republicans that blamed clinton for 9/11.

Conservatives, if 9/11 was Clinton's fault, then how is this Obama's fault?

Progressives, if 9/11 was Bush's fault then, how is this not Obama's fault?

[senatortruth]

03:26 PM on 01/07/2010

9/11 WAS the fault of Buhs and Cheeney, who also flew the Bin Ludens out on 9/12.

WHAT is Obama's "fault" here?

He WASN'T in Amsterdam, etc, so WHAT is his "fault".

[blueskybigstar]

02:01 PM on 01/07/2010

These failures are not failures. They are deliberate.

[MissingAmerica]

01:50 PM on 01/07/2010

We need only look at the state of this country even at the time Obama was elected to see that Bush ran true to his history of bankrupting corporations and possessing no leadership abilities. He should still be prosecuted. In fact, maybe holding the highest office in the land to accountability for his actions can protect us in the future, which could lead to healing the pain this nation is in.

[ProfessorDuh]

01:53 PM on 01/07/2010

Bush started his term with a surplus. He ended with his deficit-ridden administration behind closed doors with Congress, demanding a trillion dollars in corporate welfare and threatening imposition of martial law on America with days.

[surferbuoy]

01:20 PM on 01/08/2010

Behind closed doors?...you must not have been watching because most saw what was going on...and we were in charge of the Congress then.....so who exactly did what?. President Obama said he would open those door once elected but so far...not so much.

[sunny55]

12:17 PM on 01/07/2010

You just knew that any day the good old PR spin machine would go into overdrive in order to blame the administration that came before.

Remember the WH party crashers? That was Bush's fault, too.

[Jesster]

12:42 PM on 01/07/2010

When one attempts a stretch THAT far-fetched - one sounds silly, very silly.

[sunny55]

01:38 PM on 01/07/2010

There will be someone who says that there was some kind of policy in place from the Bush era, so it's that administration's fault.

[HeresaClue]

01:52 PM on 01/07/2010

You can say whatever you want but you can't run from the fact that most Gitmo detainees were released by the Bush Admin.

[Wallysmom]

11:40 AM on 01/07/2010

How interesting that Dick "Doctor of Doom" Cheney hasn't come out of his lair to comment on this botched bombing attempt. Perhaps the little story about who indoctrinated and trained Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in Yemen and what prison they were released from by the Bush Administration (hint: it's in Cuba) might have him tongue-tied.

[BCALM]

11:39 AM on 01/07/2010

Bush intelligence kept us the safest place on the planet the 7.5 years after 9/11 ( not caused by him , but due to Clinton era lapses )_...... Bush has been out of office a year and you think anybody in the country other than extreme libs are blaming him ?

[IamaLogican]

11:48 AM on 01/07/2010

Funny, I really don't hear many Repub politicians coming to Bush's defence with the exception of good ol Dick.

I hear them talk about Regan all the time, but not Bush, I wonder why?

Oh I know, because unlike you they all realize that the majority of the people in this country do infact blame Bush and Co. for the majority (if not all) of our current problems. And you know why? Because all the facts and evidence show this to be the case.

I know facing reality hurts some times, but think of it as the 'good kind of hurt', the one where you know pain means progress.

[DCX2]

01:26 PM on 01/07/2010

You forgot the Anthrax Attacks. People always seem to forget about the only biological terror attack on America...

And when some Muslim child that has been radicalized by our barbaric treatment of his innocent father/mother/brother/sister/uncle/aunt comes back to take revenge us once they become of age, will you blame the sitting President, or the President who ordered the actions that radicalized him?