It wasn’t the shock the White House leak promised, it was more of an admission, as we realized before President Obama told us tonight that the failure to stop a terrorist from blowing up a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas day and killing some 300 passengers was the result of some intelligence dots not making a connection.

This can be more realistically called an administration being out to lunch, including the one who Obama placed on his own shoulders when he said, “the buck stops here”.  That was an admiral, but more likely a disingenuous admonition of himself, but hardly original to his speech writers’ thought process, followed by a difficult  recognition, after one year in office,  that “we are at war”; something George W. Bush told us after 9/11 and throughout his administration.

But after all, Obama was just a young Harvard educated radical, an Alinsky-community organizer and a weak Senator that voted ‘present’ more often than not, and it takes time for an Ivy League graduate to connect the dots to what is happening around them when focusing on  transforming a country to socialism and then to Marxism; a place America doesn’t want to be.

But there were some revealing facts disclosed in Obama’s political, but complex briefing on this event 13 days after the fact.  He didn’t make Muslims comfortable – and that’s a good thing.  He admitted Al Qaeda recruits Muslims who are not known terrorists to do the job for them.  But he didn’t go as far as saying that this was an easy transformation – an interesting twist on words.  It sounded as though there was a fine line between a Muslim’s comfortable belief to segue to a radical and a willing desire to give their lives for Jihad in order to kill infidels?  And who are the infidels?  You got it, it’s Americans.

Now while delivering his Mea Culpa, Obama focused on our intelligence being the problem; we had the information, we shared the information, but failed to connect the dots.

Well, you didn’t have to be an Ivy League graduate to connect these dots – a father of the alleged terrorist called the US Embassy and warns that his son Umar Farouk Abdulutllab has Jihad leanings and could be a problem; one month before traveling to the US, he was put on a no fly list by the UK because of obvious signals to UK security; he books a one way flight from Nigeria to Amsterdam to Detroit with no luggage and pays cash; his effort to blow up the plane with explosives in his crotch fails partly because of his ineptitude and the actions of a passenger and the crew.

Hello!  It doesn’t take an Ivy League graduate to connect these dots, they could be connected by one who is less than a high school graduate.

But it is here that the Obama briefing was reveling when he says the focus should be on intelligence, pursuing leads, reporting intelligence more promptly, improve analysis and do a better job of putting suspects on a no fly list.

Oh, all of these elements should obviously be in place along with the ability to connect dots. No one disagrees with Obama’s analysis of failure.

But how about the concept that has been served up for years that, “the best defense is a good offense?” Simply stated it is offense that is a priority, aggressively attacking the enemy in a ‘war on terror.’

Interestingly enough it was not Obama’s primary focus in his briefing to the public to offensively attack Al Qaeda on every front possible because ‘we are at war’, but it again appeared to be a defensive posture of passiveness.

It was not a statement of attacking the enemy in a state of war.

Let’s stop pussy- footing around with Gitmo and its symbolism -  war has no symbolism, nor does it have a history of moral values – it’s a case of win or loose.  Gitmo is the best prison we have for the purpose that it serves, preserve it, stop sending terrorists back to Al Qaeda, and try terrorists in a military court with forceful questioning under the rules of the Geneva Convention.

To demonstrate where Obama is coming from, during his briefing, he said this incident was a systemic problem, there were no single mistakes but there were lots of people to blame.  So I guess this is a collective blunder – kind of a  committee failure, one that was out to lunch, but collectively no one singularly to blame.   No scapegoats for now.

Well Harry, the weight is off of your shoulder in this 21st century, rest in peace, and I for one will not forget where the “buck stops.”