Obama-Brennan-Napolitano Press Conferences-Weak Doubletalk

Today, President Obama spoke on the Christmas plane attack incident as did his security chiefs, Janet Napolitano and John Brennan. Reaction? What is there to say? It was all double-talk.

Keep in mind that all this talk about "systemic failure" was first used by Obama to refer indirectly to the policies put in place by Bush. Today, he repeats his talk about systemic failure, which also serves to protect individuals who screwed up. The most stirring thing Obama said was that we are at war against Al-Qaeda.

Great! I didn't know that.

Oh, he also said, "the buck stops here", which every president since Harry Truman has said, but we all understand that it's just because he is the president, wink, wink, nod, nod. Does he need a teleprompter to tell us that?

Then there was the dynamic duo of Janet Napolitano and John Brennan, who tried to explain what the screw up was and only confused their audience more-at least I was confused. Brennan's explanation was tortured. He said that everybody had the information, no information wasn't referred to the appropriate agencies, but the dots weren't connected and the information wasn't followed up on. (I am paraphrasing.) Of course, I grant that Brennan can't give full details for public consumption, so his task was not easy. Napolitano, in her pedantic way, sounded like a typical bureaucrat.

Napolitano also demonstrated yesterday that she has no clue as to what her job entails as she haltingly tried to tell CNN that there was some difference between 9-11 and Abdulmutallab in that 9-11 was a big conspiracy and the latter was that old "isolated extremist" forgetting that Abdulmutallab had been trained in Yemen and of course, had been named in certain watch lists.

As a former DEA agent who knows what federal inter-agency turf wars are all about, it seems increasingly clear to me that we must at least consider that unthinkable thought-a national police agency, whose data base is available to everybody involved in the war on terror. Within law enforcement, intelligence gathering and security, jurisdictional overlapping and inter-agency jealousy is the bane of effective enforcement. It appears that what we have here are different agencies responsible for counter-terrorism not being able to coordinate effectively. One example to ponder is-why is the FBI not within the Department of Homeland Security-or the CIA?

Of course, any insider would laugh and tell you that such a thought is absurd-and probably be right. Yet, here we have the CIA, FBI, DHS, ICE, Military Intelligence, NSA all having a role to play in protecting the American people from terror. (Have I left anybody out?) They all have their computer data bases. Do they all have access? Don't ask me-I am retired. I do know that both the Ft Hood and the Northwest Airlines incidents were the result of failed coordination of intelligence. What do Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and Major Hasan have in common? Both should have been nipped in the bud.

In the war on terror and to prevent any further 9-11s, our agencies must be able to coordinate like a well-oiled machine. And as for those security measures at airports world-wide? We need to learn a lesson from the Israelis. As I have said before, profiling goes way beyond ethnicity, skin color or religion. Yet, we must face reality. Airport security should not have to spend as much time checking out little old Mrs. Olsen as they would with those who are the real threats. So, should we spend more time scrutinizing people from Islamic countries? Sorry, but the answer is yes. What if they are Muslims and citizens of western countries? Sorry again, but the answer is yes. There are simply too many lives at stake here for airport screeners and security officials to be terrified of lawsuits over racial profiling. A true professional, like those developed by the Israelis, can quickly dismiss a Muslim as a threat as well.

The other thing that needs to be done by our leaders is to honestly acknowledge where the threat is coming from-not stigmatizing entire peoples, but being honest with the public-who knows anyway. Yes, Muslim travelers are going to be inconvenienced and offended, but they should save their anger for those of their coreligionists who have brought us all to this point. Do Muslim travelers ever wonder why they get dirty looks from non-Muslim travelers in those long airport lines? Subjecting each and every airline traveler to long lines and detailed searches is not fair, nor is it effective.

But that's where I guess we are headed-thanks to political correctness.