TERROR - Lesson Was NOT Learned

The following proves that we have yet to learn from our security mistakes of 9/11. America is not secure because Washington is still run by dunces and turf-protectors.

"U.S. Had Early Signals of a Terror Plot, Obama Says" by Peter Baker and Carl Hulse, New York Times

Excerpt

President Obama was told Tuesday about more missed signals and uncorrelated intelligence that should have prevented a would-be bomber from boarding a flight to the United States, leading the president to declare that there had been a “systemic failure” of the nation’s security apparatus.

Two officials said the government had intelligence from Yemen before Friday that leaders of a branch of Al Qaeda were talking about “a Nigerian” being prepared for a terrorist attack. While the attacker was not named, officials said it would have been evident had it been compared to information about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian charged with trying to blow up an American passenger jet on Christmas Day.

The government also had more information about where Mr. Abdulmutallab had been and what some of his plans were before boarding the Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit. Some of the information was partial or incomplete at the time, and it was not obvious that it was connected, one senior administration official said, but in retrospect it now appears clear that had it all been examined together it would have pointed to the pending attack.

The official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive review, said the government was “increasingly confident” that Al Qaeda had a role in the attack, as the group’s Yemeni branch has publicly claimed. Such a conclusion could lead the United States to provide more intelligence and equipment to the Yemeni government and even consider fresh targets in a continuing campaign against radicals in Yemen.

The fresh information about what the government knew before the flight on Friday was provided to White House officials Monday night and to the president on Tuesday while he was here vacationing in Hawaii.

Shortly after being briefed, Mr. Obama told reporters that a review had revealed a breakdown in the intelligence system that did not properly identify Mr. Abdulmutallab as a dangerous extremist who should have been prevented from flying to the United States.

“A systemic failure has occurred, and I consider that totally unacceptable,” Mr. Obama said.

"Unacceptable" is putting it mildly. All these years after 9/11 we should not be having this type of problem.

The so-called Homeland Security was created with the idea of not having this problem. Instead we have an elephant that cannot move with any speed, when what America needs is a security agency that moves at the speed of a gazelle.