Just because the attempt failed doesn’t mean it wasn’t terrorism. He slipped through and nearly detonated a bomb on a plane while in flight. It could have been catastrophic.
The initial reaction of the Obama Administration on this was to try to paint a perky PR picture. Heckuva job there, TSA. Well no, it wasn’t. Sure, mistakes happen. What’s important is that those involve admit to them and then work to fix what was broken. Which appears to be what Homeland Security is doing now, if belatedly.
Sue and I fly a lot and have no desire to have a bomber on-board. In my opinion, the merging of all security agenciies in the monolith that is Homeland Security was a mistake because such a ponderous bureaucracy almost by definition can not move fast or be agile. And it needs to be able to.
Update: Obama just said it was “systemic failure.” Good.
maybe if they thinned out the list they go by, taking off all the innocent people we keep hearing about, they might have a smaller list and be able to catch the bad guys. They can’t see the forest for the trees.