Word: homelands
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...President Obama's fault that our multibillion-dollar homeland-security apparatus is more Keystone Kops than 24 ... The Federal Government is (alas) a vast, ungovernable enterprise. And the bigger it gets, the less effective it will become ... [Still,] the President is in thrall to the illusion of a skilled, paternalistic government ... Could the new New Deal just get airplane safety right first...
...that." Granted, al-Awlaki lacks combat experience. But Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, believes that the cleric has a strong influence on operational issues. "He plays a role in setting a strategic direction for AQAP," he says. "He's telling them, 'Attacking the U.S. homeland should be one of our priorities.' " Is that reason enough for the U.S. to try to take al-Awlaki out? "Absolutely, yes," says Hoekstra. "This is a guy who is encouraging and organizing people to kill Americans." The counterterrorism official agrees: "Taking him off the street would deal a blow...
...took more than a year for reporters to discover the existence of Bush's Aug. 6 PDB, but already questions are being put to the White House about Obama's briefings. Did any possible AQAP threat to the homeland ever appear in a PDB or any other briefing? How many times was Obama briefed on it? What threats were described? Did the President ask any follow-up questions? Did he task anyone to take any particular actions? Were any of AQAP's tactics, like explosives sewn into clothing, mentioned in briefings to the President? (See pictures of the foiled...
...Administration has dodged some of these questions. When Brennan was asked on Jan. 7 when the specific threat posed to the homeland by AQAP first became known, he did not directly answer the question. He did acknowledge that he traveled to Saudi Arabia last September to investigate AQAP's attempted assassination of the kingdom's top counterterrorism official. That attack used explosives sewn into clothing and detonated with a chemical trigger, which is harder to detect than a traditional metal trigger...
...attempt, it appears that the U.S. intelligence community had warned that there was a new, dangerous type of bomb being deployed by AQAP; that this new bomb could be used against planes; and that AQAP sought to strike the U.S. homeland. Further, the intelligence community knew that a radicalized Nigerian was in Yemen and that his father thought he might be planning some kind of "jihad," according to reports following the bomb attempt...