President Obama said that the intelligence had “failed to connect the dots” in the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The man who “allegedly” tried to blow-up the Northwest flight Christmas day.
“Failed to connect the dots” my ass, with the amount of intel being collected the dots are so close together that the page is black.
What happened, and will continue to happen, is the bureaucrats will shuffle papers, the intelligence people will write reports saying what their supervisor, who’s final report will be geared to please the politicians, wants them to say, the politicians will make speeches and the people on the ground will continue to be automatons. Shuffling bureaucracies and area of responsibility won’t change anything.
The problem is amazingly simple: There was a report floating around that al-Queda was planning an attack on the US during the holidays and a Nigerian was involved. This man’s father went to the US Embassy and told them his son was radicalized with ties to al-Queda and had talked of “sacrificing himself.”. Some mid-level bureaucrat at the embassy dutifully wrote it all down and sent this information on up the food chain where Abdulmutallab was put on a generic terrorist list along with a half a million other names.
As I understand it, this man boarded an international flight in Amsterdam without any luggage. –Who the hell flies across the Atlantic with nothing but a passport and a pair of loaded underwear? Wouldn’t that make you stop and wonder, just a little?
Back in 2007 they deployed full body scanners in Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. They also have iris scanners and all kinds of other security. –All of which failed.
The equipment didn’t fail. Everyone involved, who’s job it is to be on the front lines, failed.
The man at the embassy in Nigeria that handled the case either wasn’t informed or more likely did it all on autopilot. –Maybe there are so many extremists with ties to al-Queda wanting to sacrifice themselves in Nigeria that this didn’t raise any alarms, or perhaps this is a common way for parents to get embassy personnel to help them find wayward children. –My bet is that he’s just putting in his time.
In the airport they process so many passengers that everything is done automatically. Nobody thinks. They just stand around waiting for something they can see. Like maybe a Browning 50 cal. tucked into somebody’s carry-on bag.
We don’t need more intelligence gathering, we need more common sense.
Back in the day when this airport insanity first started and you couldn’t bring liquids on board because they might be explosive, I watch as security tossed bottle after bottle in trash cans right behind them.
I don’t know about you, but if I think something is going to explod,e I am not about to toss it anywhere near me. Neither are those security personnel who were collecting anything liquid. They were simply going through the motions. They knew none of it was likely to do anything worse than possibly stain someone’s clothes. But the rules are the rules, and somebody in charge, who also had no clue, told them to do it
The system is broken and it has so little to do with intelligence that to say the dots weren’t connected is laughable.
It’s the TSA hiring hundreds of people and putting them to work without the proper training for the job they’re being asked to do.
It’s the bureaucrats protecting their turf.
It’s a dog and pony show as opposed to real change.
It’s an intelligence Czar who can’t get the CIA, NSA or FBI to share data.
It’s disparate computer systems. –Even within the individual agencies.
But mostly it’s the people on the ground failing to do their jobs.
If the guy at the embassy had said “hey I think we may have something here” instead of filling out forms.
If the people farther up the food chain had done anything other that file the report and put his name on a generic list.
If the airline had required something less than a history of blowing himself up to put his name on a cautionary list.
And most importantly, if the airport screeners had used that fancy equipment or had paused long enough to think that a man with no luggage might warrant a second look.
–We wouldn’t have had to rely on a failed detonator and fast thinking passengers to save lives..
