‘A certain shock’?

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January 9, 2010

Anonymous The Jacksonville Daily Progress Sat Jan 09, 2010, 06:28 PM CST

And it happened again.

Once more, Americans have been threatened and nearly killed by a terrorist — this time by a Nigerian-born son of a banker who was allegedly recruited by al Qaeda in London, trained in Yemen, then boarded a Dec. 25 Detroit-bound plane in Amsterdam with explosives sewn into his underwear.

But for the grace of God and some sheer dumb luck, the 289 others on board the flight could have been killed — when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate the device, it failed.

Thursday’s release of a report detailing how he even was allowed to board the flight was prefaced with President Obama’s national security adviser James Jones saying the findings would cause “a certain shock” in America.

Early reports about Abdulmutallab showed his own father warned officials at the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria that his son might do something like this.

He also bought his ticket with cash, neither carried nor checked luggage, and his name was on a watch list.

How were all of these warning signs missed?

It wasn’t until the flight was in the air, apparently, security personnel noticed something was awry and planned to question him when he landed in Detroit.

Had Abdulmutallab had his way, he never would have landed.

Neither would the 289 passengers and crew members on the plane.

Media in the U.S. and abroad have analyzed and criticized what went wrong and who is to blame for the near-snafu.

Jones likened this to the “second strike” against the Obama administration’s handling of national security — the first being November’s shooting rampage at Fort Hood.

There is no room for a third strike. There is no excuse for the first two.

Every voter in America should let their representatives know enough is enough — enough bloodshed, enough Americans killed and enough excuses.

It’s been more than eight years since 9/11, and we know the terrorists will not stop.

They are tireless, thorough, relentless and have almost exquisite attention to detail.

It’s time our security forces were all that and more.

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