Jan 07 Where's the Urgency?

When people read that the head of the NCTC stayed on the slopes after the attempted terrorist attack, they're gonna be mightily upset. Here's what the NYDN is reporting:

The top official in charge of analyzing terror threats did not cut short his ski vacation after the underwear bomber nearly blew up an airliner on Christmas Day, the Daily News has learned.

Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center since 2007, decided not to return to his agency's "bat cave" nerve center in McLean, Va., until several days after Christmas, two U.S. officials said.

"People have been grumbling that he didn't let a little terrorism interrupt his vacation," said one of the sources.

Mr. Leiter will rightfully get excoriated for his disinterest in investigating what went wrong and what needed to be done to tighten his operations up. Unless I miss my guess, I'm betting that the American people will have steam billowing out their ears over this.

While it's important that Mr. Leiter is held accountable, I hope it isn't lost on the American people that President Obama took the same nonchalant approach as Mr. Leiter took. I hope the American people notice that President Obama's anti-terrorist policies aren't focused on gaining important intel on the terrorists' networks and operations.

This is bombshell news. President Obama's mantra since the foiled terrorist attack has been that the system failed. That's BS in the sense that this terrorist getting as far as he did had more to do with this administration not putting a high enough priority on fighting the jihadists.

The perception is growing that this administration just isn't serious about fighting a smart fight against the jihadists. It's disheartening to see the head of the NCTC and the commander-in-chief take such a nonchalant attitude towards gathering as much information about what happened prior to the attack.

It was disheartening, too, to hear President Obama speak about Abdulmutallab as an "isolated extremist" days after it'd been reported that Abdulmutallab admitted that he was tied into al-Qa'ida. Most disheartening, though, was the fact that President Obama didn't sound serious about this until the public outcry started mounting. Only then did he get upset.

Mr. Leiter's actions are just a symbol of the lax attitude this administration has towards thwarting terrorist attacks. The drone killings make for nice headlines but there's alot of nuts-and-bolts types of things that this administration obviously isn't engaging in.

It isn't a system failure that Abdulmutallab was Mirandized. That was just a failed Obama administration policy. That wasn't system-related. That was, to use Janet Napolitano's words, a man-caused disaster.

Let's not forget that the State Department played a role in this, too. They knew about Abdulmutallab's father telling the Nigerian embassy that his son had been radicalized. The State Department did nothing to revoke Abdulmutallab's visa after getting that information. THEY DID NOTHING with that information.

If President Obama meant that his administration dropped the ball when he said that the system failed, then I'll agree with him. If he's essentially saying that it's President Bush's fault, then I'll have to ridicule him.

I suspect that this story got leaked for a purpose. I suspect that that purpose is that this guy will be the scapegoat with the additional bonus of being able to say that Leiter was part of the NCTC during President Bush's term in office.

But Leiter's decision to stay close to the ski slopes instead of his headquarters, ground zero for defending the nation against terror, has raised eyebrows among intelligence officials, who have been scrambling since Dec. 25 to figure out what went wrong and plug the holes.

It's time that the Obama administration started focusing on jihadists like a laser beam. It's time that this administration got serious about things other than their ideological agenda.

Let's put things in focus. President Obama focused 29 speeches on his radical health care takeover. He delivered a dozen speeches on why Congress needed to pass the stimulus bill without reading it. By comparison, President Obama didn't insist that the bill actually created jobs. By comparison, President Obama took 3 months before giving Gen. McChrystal half of the troops he said he needed to avoid defeat in Afghanistan. By comparison, President Obama didn't overrule Attorney Gen. Holder's decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab.

It's time that Mr. Leiter, the State Department and this administration prove that they aren't utterly incompetent.

Comments welcome at LFR.