“Certain Shock”

Americans will feel “certain shock” when a report detailing the intelligence failures that could have prevented the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing is published today. “In an interview Wednesday with USA Today, White House national security adviser James Jones said President Obama ‘is legitimately and correctly alarmed that things that were available, bits of information that were available, patterns of behavior that were available, were not acted on.’ ‘That’s two strikes,’ he was quoted as saying, referring to the failed Northwest jet attack and the shooting massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, in November. The Army base attack left 13 dead after officials failed to act on intelligence identifying suspected gunman Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as a threat to fellow soldiers. Jones, a retired four-star Marine general, told the paper that Obama ‘certainly doesn’t want that third strike, and neither does anybody else.’ The White House on Thursday plans to make public the declassified account of the near catastrophe on Christmas Day, and President Obama was to address Americans about its findings and recommendations. Obama, too, was to reveal new steps intended to thwart terrorist attacks, as he promised earlier in the week.”