Icer wrote:
By your scoring I can because the launch went as planned and since we are compartmentalizing who cares if one portion failed miserably.

You're right Dave. Her comment was self promoting - she should not be talking about what they did right in the context of a security breach - she should be talking about what they are doing to study what happened and improve their approach. I certainly hope she conveyed the later but I haven't bothered to track down the original source interview. If she didn't perhaps there is a problem here...

I think the reason the criticism is annoying me is that it seems to come along with a presumption that there is something different we could be doing that would have prevented this, its clear what that is, and these people are idiots for not doing it.

I certainly hope there is something different that we could be doing, but I don't think its obvious yet. A lot of the stuff thats being thrown around is sort of knee-jerk "throw security stuff at the problem." I'm not convinced that millimeter wave scanners are going to end terrorism as we know it.

A few days ago all we knew is that they got this tip that may or may not have been credible. Since then more information has come out. One thing I do fault her for was her comment that this guy acted alone. We now know that wasn't true - she obviously didn't know either way when she said it. Its beginning to sound like there are some things that we could have known - things the NSA and the CIA might have put together.

But that raises another matter - the organizations that really have the intelligence needed to identify terrorists before they strike aren't within DHS. Perhaps she is focused on the response because thats really what DHS does. Pre-emption happens somewhere else - and perhaps there still isn't a single person accountable for it in the federal government, other than the President himself.

RE: "System worked" comments being taken out of context.