President Obama on January 7 ordered intelligence agencies to implement a series of steps to make the analysis and pursuit of terrorism threats more efficient. The new steps will include tightened passenger screening and expanded terrorism watchlists.

"I am less interested in passing out blame than I am in learning from and correcting these mistakes to make us safer. For ultimately the buck stops with me," Obama said during a White House statement. "As president I have a solemn responsibility to protect our nation and our people, and when the system fails, it is my responsibility."

A Reuters news report quoted Obama’s statement: "Although our intelligence community had learned a great deal about the al Qaida affiliate in Yemen, called al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, that we knew that they sought to strike the United States and that they were recruiting operatives to do so, the intelligence community did not aggressively follow up on and prioritize particular streams of intelligence.”

In reaction to the president’s statements,  Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), told Fox News on January 8: "The president says we're going to have smart, sensible screening at airports. You know what? I hope so. It's about time."

Fox also quoted Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, who said the State Department should suspend the visas of everybody in the terror database of more than a half-million people, pending "further investigation."

Collins also said the Department of Homeland Security should verify that all foreigners flying to the United States have valid visas.

"If the State Department had cancelled Abdulmutallab's visa, he would never have been permitted to board his flight in Amsterdam," Collins noted said in a written statement.

And another Republican senator, John Cornyn of Texas, was quoted by Reuters:

"I worry that the president's preoccupation with healthcare and other domestic issues has distracted him from what should be the fundamental role of our chief executive: keeping our nation and its citizenry safe from harm.”

The Office of the White House Press Secretary released a statement on January 7 titled “White House Review Summary Regarding 12/25/2009 Attempted Terrorist Attack” that noted:

• The U.S. Government had sufficient information prior to the attempted December 25 attack to have potentially disrupted the AQAP plot-i.e., by identifying Mr. Abdulmutallab as a likely operative of AQAP and potentially preventing him from boarding flight 253.
• The Intelligence Community leadership did not increase analytic resources working on the full AQAP threat.
• The watchlisting system is not broken but needs to be strengthened and improved, as evidenced by the failure to add Mr. Abdulmutallab to the No Fly watchlist.
• A reorganization of the intelligence or broader counterterrorism community is not required to address problems that surfaced in the review, a fact made clear by countless other successful efforts to thwart ongoing plots.

While no one can doubt that the Christmas day incident was too close for comfort and that improved security procedures are needed, some statements coming from administration officials in recent days indicate that new procedures to be put into effect may impact the travel of loyal American citizens more than al Qaeda or other alien terrorists.

For example, during a meeting in the White House Press Briefing Room held on January 7, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano mentioned five of the recommendations that are included in DHS’s report to the President. Some made sense, such as “reevaluation and modification of the criteria and process used to create the terrorist watchlists,” “increasing the number of federal air marshals,” and working to strengthen international security measures and standards for aviation security abroad.

However, some proposals to be used domestically will affect air travelers more likely to be affiliated with the local PTA than al Qaeda, and do not bode well for our civil liberties long taken for granted under our Bill of Rights. In Secretary Napolitnao’s words:

In his article for The New American online, “Whole Body Scanners: Would They Have Detected the Detroit Bomb?,”writer Joe Wolverton II noted that the Christmas Day bomber had smuggled aboard the plane 80 grams of a substance called pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN). Citing statements made by Ben Wallace, a member of the U.K. Parliament and former executive of a British firm that researched the effectiveness of such scanners, Wolverton noted: “that as early as 2005 [Wallace’s] company informed the British government that the millimeter-waves used in the scanners pass through low-density objects such as those listed above [PETN], allowing them to be successfully smuggled aboard airplanes. It makes sense that such materials would be ‘invisible’ to the scanners as they are essentially made of the same material as the clothing they so embarrassingly disregard.”

As Wolverton concluded:

“When Richard Reid hid a bomb in his shoe, travelers thereafter had to remove their shoes. Along comes Umar Abdulmutallab with a bomb hidden in his underwear and travelers will soon be required to expose the most intimate parts of their bodies to a humiliating full-body scan. The next al-Qaeda gambit is impossible to predict, but there are myriad locations where a bomb could be secreted.”

Which makes constant repetition of these words of the Fourth  Amendment to our governmental officials very necessary:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” [Emphasis added.]

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SCHNORCHEL

January 08, 2010

68.104.7.210

Votes: +2

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Looking for the people at fault instead of the machinery

Isn't anyone aware that there might have been terrorists employed by the TSA?

DDW

January 08, 2010

173.74.213.85

Votes: +4

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Also . . .

Are we to be certain that our very own out-of-control, untrustworthy fedgov did not know this was going to happen, look the other way so that it could happen and then use the incident as an excuse to make the unconstitutional police state larger and more intrusive? Why, I must be a wacko nut case seeing conspiracies behind every tree, ha?

rprew

January 08, 2010

72.201.107.33

Votes: +5

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The correct response

1. Withdraw all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Withdraw all minor deployments of troops from Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, United Arab Emirates, and Egypt (including the Sinai), and any other Middle Eastern countries I may have neglected to mention. Stop trying to interfere in the affairs of Iran, Pakistan, etc. This will negate much of the motivation of the terrorists.

2. Stop trying to be politically correct and aggressively screen those who present probable cause. Yes, this may mean (GASP!)... profiling! Leave everyone else alone. (Yeah, yeah... I know! Profiling is embarrassing! I've been profiled. I've also been cleared and life has gone on. Get over it.)

3. Let the airlines have the freedom to choose when and to whom they may desire to refuse passage. The airlines that choose well will gain a reputation of being "safe" and attract passengers.

4. Arm flight deck personnel.

5. Abolish the TSA.

(In regards to #1... No, I have not forgotten about other illegal troop deployments to England, Germany, Japan, etc. Here I merely address the direct terror threat.)

Lee Gonzales

January 08, 2010

98.230.205.55

Votes: +3

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We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service To Anyone

"We reserve The right to refuse service to anyone."

The airlines are privately owned but the government sets the policy in the same fashion that Mussolini set policy for privately owned businessess in Facist Italy. Mussolini's goal was to control people not to protect them.

This bit of trash from the Republican "opposition" about the president's top priority being the protection of the American people is baloney. His top priority is to obey the Constitution! That duty does not include hiring federal snoops with purple gloves to undress women with body scanning machines.

The present idiot president and the village idiot that preceded him think that the American people are too stupid to see through their rotten schemes. Maybe there are way too many who buy the nonsense from DHS, but it will be up to sites like this to awaken even these fools who place "security" before freedom. Eventually this whole scam will be exposed and we can return to a sane country that will never again elect doofuses from Texas or street organizing hustlers from Chicago.

Larry Brown

January 09, 2010

209.40.77.108

Votes: +4

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...

The only thing that saved Dec. 25, 2009 Flight 253 was the incompetence of the bomber. We can be sure that al Qaida is upgrading their suicide bomber training including the quality control on the explosives.

I have yet to find anything that Obama has done or proposed that is constitutional.

Samuels

January 11, 2010

67.53.28.211

Votes: +2

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Liberty

Those that give up liberty for security deserve neither liberty nor security.

Idahon8tv

January 12, 2010

64.146.228.153

Votes: +0

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I get the dynamic

I really do understand the dynamic of the U.S. being viewed as the world's on call police force. But at a certain point and place, I feel that we need to pull back and let the ever growing multitude of nation states stand up and walk on their own two feet.
We have enough problems facing us as a nation. I don't view this as isolationist at all, rather a feeling that as citizens we should come to an awakening that we cannot continue to let our nation fall apart while we are busy helping everyone else.

The terror threat is in no small part due to our own meddling in other folks affairs, pure and simple. There are religious factors, no doubt, but we would not be viewed as the great satan if we kept our collective noses out of others business.

We need fixing too.

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