WTF! OUR $50 BILLION DOLLAR INTELLIGENCE MACHINE IS NOT WORKING!

WASHINGTON - The system worked, in the cover-your-backside world of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
Baloney.

The system worked, if you don't count the parts that deal with airport security and screening, and the $50 billion intelligence apparatus that is supposed to keep track of terrorists and terror wanna-bes.

No, Janet, none of that stuff had anything to do with the happy ending for Flight 253. What worked was sheer luck, combined with the incompetence of the undies bomber and the true grit of the passengers and flight attendants.

What should be working now, but isn't, is a sense of urgency from the nation's leaders that they are trying to fix the problems, and that begins with President Obama.

The U.S. government had enough information to know that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab presented a terror risk. But the intelligence never got into the right hands.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs talked about the job ahead "to ensure that there is no clog in the bureaucratic plumbing of information that might be gathered somewhere going to the very highest levels of security in government."

Uh-huh. Agreed.

But what if the bomber wasn't a klutz?

What if there were no hero Dutchman nearby to step in with seconds to spare?

What if the next bomber brings some muscle aboard to hold back the heroes so he can finish the job?

The system also broke down last month in the case of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan and the Fort Hood massacre. Again, there were red flags everywhere that got caught in the bureaucratic plumbing. A lengthy review is underway. We still await the results.

Obama didn't create the clueless bureaucracy. Many of the problems were inherited from the Bush administration. But Americans need to hear that the broken parts of the system are being fixed in a hurry, not nonsense about how it worked.

And Americans need confidence that something stands between them and catastrophe. In that context, it's not unseemly to recall President George W. Bush's hugely misplaced confidence in hapless Federal Emegency Management Agency Director Michael Brown after Hurricane Katrina.

We're hoping we never hear Obama say "Heckuva job, Janet."