Obama: Anti-Terrorist Security System Failed

Good morning. Yesterday I updated the American people on the immediate steps we took -- the increased screening and security of air travel -- to keep our country safe in the wake of the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas Day. And I announced two reviews -- a review of our terrorist watch list system and a review of our air travel screening, so we can find out what went wrong, fix it and prevent future attacks.

Those reviews began on Sunday and are now underway. Earlier today I issued the former [sic] guidelines for those reviews and directed that preliminary findings be provided to the White House by this Thursday. It's essential that we diagnose the problems quickly and deal with them immediately.

Now, the more comprehensive, formal reviews and recommendations for improvement will be completed in the coming weeks, and I'm committed to working with Congress and our intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security communities to take all necessary steps to protect the country.

I wanted to speak to the American people again today because some of this preliminary information that has surfaced in the last 24 hours raises some serious concerns. It's been widely reported that the father of the suspect in the Christmas incident warned U.S. officials in Africa about his son's extremist views. It now appears that weeks ago this information was passed to a component of our intelligence community, but was not effectively distributed so as to get the suspect's name on a no-fly list.

There appears to be other deficiencies as well. Even without this one report there were bits of information available within the intelligence community that could have and should have been pieced together. We've achieved much since 9/11 in terms of collecting information that relates to terrorists and potential terrorist attacks. But it's becoming clear that the system that has been in place for years now is not sufficiently up to date to take full advantage of the information we collect and the knowledge we have.

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News & Politics

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• Obama
• NWA
• Al Qaida
• Detroit
• Hawaii
• bomb
• plane
• Yemen
• terrorist

[TheDemonPazuzu]

I loathe and despise corrupt politicians like Obama.

[irocku2day]

What a weak lame ass president. Can't even put on a tie and "try" to look presidential....reading from index cards. Wow. He'll scare terrorists for sure...oops that's right - he calls them "misguided individuals" who should have all rights conferred upon them, sent to Manhattan, etc.

[Mikevdog]

misguided individuals carrying out man-caused disasters. we will defeat them with temporarily enhanced screening procedures!

[Mikevdog]

We should just give up and let the terrorists carry on. We can spare a few people. I mean, after all, they aren't as bad as cars.

[Mikevdog]

So, if we are just "nice" the Islamists will love us? That's it? They are only bad because we made them do it?

[Eye0fTheStorm]

The sheer stupidity of Americans literally boggles the mind. They can't take 10 minutes to ask tough questions of the media

Iraq/Afghanistan war have created THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS more terrorists than their were before. You will never ever stop terrorism with "security measures"

You stop terrorism by treating people fairly so they don't hate you

Stop assasinating popular leaders, organizing coups, installing and supporting dictators etc

[crashman6]

@bigc028282

The truth is Americans are thousands upon thousands of times more likely to die by suicide than a terrorist act. However the common citizen is fed fear propaganda every day by the media. Yet we don't talk about the thousands of people that die every day on the highway, which is ten thousand more times likely to kill you than a terrorist. I am with you, it is all bullshit propaganda.

[LeopardFrogPilboxhat]

bush failed to protect us against the shoe bomber

[mmcintee]

Yes, I remember how President Bush always wore a tie when holding news conferences at his Texas ranch.NOT! He's supposed to be on vacation. And if you were paying attention he said he would "dismantle" them. Doesn't sound like a terrorist friendly guy to me.

[chewbaca1989]

Big Government = Failure in defending from attack.

He admits as much, "we have to be more vigilant".

Airlines should be accountable, one snafu and it goes out of business.

The Government fails to protect and we get a 9-11.