Krauthammer Is Wrong, Way Behind Re: Napolitano

Charles Krautham­mer today:

Janet Napoli­tano — for­mer Ari­zona gov­er­nor, now over­matched sec­re­tary of home­land secu­rity — will for­ever be remem­bered for hav­ing said of the attempt to bring down an air­liner over Detroit: “The sys­tem worked.”

The Atlantic two days ago:

My ini­tial take on Pres­i­dent Obama’s remarks on the Detroit ter­ror inci­dent in Hawaii was that his most poignant statement–that a “sys­temic fail­ure” had occurred–was a direct rebuke of Home­land Secu­rity Sec­re­tary Janet Napolitano’s state­ment two days after the inci­dent occurred that “the sys­tem worked.” This was not accurate.

Obama, as I failed to men­tion in that post, cast Napolitano’s analy­sis as cor­rect, say­ing that “once the sus­pect attempted to take down Flight 253, after his attempt, it’s clear that pas­sen­gers and crew, our home­land secu­rity sys­tems and our avi­a­tion secu­rity took all appro­pri­ate actions.”

Obama’s “sys­temic fail­ure” spoke to a dif­fer­ent part of the secu­rity process than what Napoli­tano had orig­i­nally addressed. When Napoli­tano said that the “sys­tem worked,” she was talk­ing about the response to the inci­dent, not the cause.

Charles Krautham­mer today:

Heck of a job, Brownie.

Me two days ago:

Heck­uva job… Dubya?

What do you say to tom­fool­ery like this, espe­cially when it gets printed in the Wash­ing­ton Post?

1 January 2010 – 1:27 pm | By Benjamin Daniels | Posted in Politics, War | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (325)