rssObama Acknowledges Government Screw-Up
Tuesday, December 29, 2009 at 4:51 pm
- 13 Comments
President Obama just acknowledged that the government messed up in not passing along information intelligence agents had about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane on Christmas Day.
While we already knew that Abdulmutallab’s father, a retired banker in Nigeria, had warned U.S. authorities about his son’s extremist views, “it now appears that weeks ago this information was passed to a component of our intelligence community, and it was not sufficiently distributed” through the homeland security system, President Obama said in a speech this afternoon. As a result, Abdulmutallab did not land on the government’s no-fly list — although he should have, said the president.
“We’ve achieved much since 9/11 in terms of collecting information that relates to terrorists and potential terrorists attacks,” said Obama, but “the system is not sufficiently up to date to take advantage of the information we have.” If it had been, “a fuller clearer picture of the suspect would have emerged” and “the suspect never would have been allowed to board that plane to America.”
Obama will no doubt be criticized for referring to Abdulmutallab as “the suspect” instead of “the terrorist” — he was denounced this morning on Fox & Friends for using the big word “allegedly” instead of simply presuming the man’s guilt in plain English and in a more “presidential” fashion.
But unlike his predecessor after the 9/11 attacks, Obama is acknowledging quickly where things went wrong, and now promises to do something about it.
13 Comments
Comment posted December 29, 2009 @ 5:01 pm
the Fox crowd have sanitized their history of the Bush presidency, but I remember all of it
Not only did 9/11 occur on Bush/Cheney's watch, but those 2 spent the next couple of years aggressively resisting and impeding any & all investigations into the tragedy.
Pingback posted December 29, 2009 @ 5:04 pm
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Comment posted December 29, 2009 @ 5:26 pm
Neat pro Obama stance at the end there. Or, extremists were scared at the volatility of Bush, but aren't scared of Obama at all and will try more attacks since he is not going to retaliate on anyone. Obama and his empty promises. I hope you're right, but I'm not holding my breath.
Comment posted December 29, 2009 @ 5:31 pm
Oh that's funny. Yeah, extremists were afraid of Bush retaliating… In the country next door.
Comment posted December 29, 2009 @ 7:55 pm
This happened on Obama's watch and the president is right not to pass the buck. However, the media need to do their job. In the years since the shoe-bombing attempt what steps were taken by either administration to improve security. Why were they ineffective in this case. What efforts to improve security were begun by the Bush administration? What was communicated to the incoming administration? Why after nearly a decade since 9/11 aren't we doing better at screening and communicating? These questions need to be asked of both administrations. Clearly there are systemic problems spanning both administrations. In my opinion, fixing these problems should have been a top priority and I would have expected the needed reforms to have happened already. I fear we continue to witness the symptoms of focussing on military rather than law enforcement, which began with Bush and has continued with Obama. Yet, the media seems not to be asking the necessary questions as political attacks from the right are predictably dominating our dysfunctional national discourse. The intelligence and screening problems span two administrations. We need solutions not recriminations.
Pingback posted December 29, 2009 @ 11:39 pm
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Comment posted December 30, 2009 @ 12:14 am
Couldn't agree more, jr: solutions, not recriminations. My point was that if the right wants to crank up the blame game—bring it on. Otherwise lets DO get down to the business of solutions.
Think Fox news is on board?
Comment posted December 30, 2009 @ 12:55 am
This happened on Obama's watch and the president is right not to pass the buck. However, the media need to do their job. In the years since the shoe-bombing attempt what steps were taken by either administration to improve security? Why were they ineffective in this case? What efforts to improve security were begun by the Bush administration? What was communicated to the incoming administration? Why after nearly a decade since 9/11 aren't we doing better at screening and communicating? These questions need to be asked of both administrations. Clearly there are systemic problems spanning both administrations. In my opinion, fixing these problems should have been a top priority and I would have expected the needed reforms to have happened already. I fear we continue to witness the symptoms of focussing on military rather than law enforcement, which began with Bush and has continued with Obama. Yet, the media seems not to be asking the necessary questions as political attacks from the right are predictably dominating our dysfunctional national discourse. The intelligence and screening problems span two administrations. We need solutions not recriminations.
Trackback posted December 30, 2009 @ 4:07 am
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Comment posted December 30, 2009 @ 5:14 am
Couldn't agree more, jr: solutions, not recriminations. My point was that if the right wants to crank up the blame game—bring it on. Otherwise lets DO get down to the business of solutions.
D'ya think Fox is on board?
Pingback posted December 30, 2009 @ 10:03 am
[...] More: "Obama Acknowledges Government Screw-Up" and related posts [...]
Pingback posted December 30, 2009 @ 10:10 am
[...] Obama Acknowledges Government Screw-Up « The Washington Independent [...]
Pingback posted January 6, 2010 @ 11:34 am
[...] it’s nice that President Obama yesterday acknowledged the government’s errors and promised to launch an investigation into why Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab wasn’t on the No-Fly [...]
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