The intelligence community is clueless and compromised, to be sure. But it is no worse than any other U.S. government agency. Until there is a wholesale reevaluation of counterterror strategy, and a realistic appraisal of the jihad doctrine and Islamic supremacism in all its forms, there will be many more failures like this one.
“Intelligence agencies slammed over Christmas plot,” by Eli Lake in the Washington Times, May 19:
A scathing new Senate report is blaming nearly every facet of the U.S. intelligence community for failing to connect the dots on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian national who attempted to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet en route from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day.
The unclassified summary released late Tuesday found 14 specific faults in the intelligence community’s actions prior to the Christmas Day failed bombing that saw an agent of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula nearly detonate a military-grade explosive sewn into his underwear.
The report for example faults the State Department for failing to revoke Mr. Abdulmutallab’s visa; the CIA for failing to disseminate intelligence on him to other relevant agencies; the National Security Agency for failing to put Mr. Abdulmutallab on a “watch list”; and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) for failing to connect reporting on the Christmas Day bomber and to conduct additional research on him.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said, “The attempted Christmas Day attack was marked by several intelligence failures.”
Mrs. Feinstein’s Republican counterpart on the committee, Senator Christopher S. “Kit” Bond, offered an equally harsh assessment.
“Unfortunately, there is no longer any doubt that major intelligence failures allowed the Christmas Day bomber to almost turn our airplanes into deadly weapons once again,” the Missouri lawmaker said in a statement. “We cannot depend on dumb luck, incompetent terrorists and alert citizens to keep our families safe. It is critical we make changes to prevent these types of intelligence failures in the future.”…
Indeed. But the changes that need to be made are not on the horizon.