The buck stops Here.

"The buck stops here". Well the President said it. He has now taken all responsibility for future events. He has a problem though. He has set himself up to fail. Take a look around the conference table of security advisers just a few hours before the President made his statement. Twenty people were setting there. To name a few; Secretary of State, Secretary of Defence, Secretary of Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, NSA, NSS, TSA etc. The problem I see is there are too many department and agency heads. Too many kingdoms. They all are searching for terrorist. They all are receiving data. But are they all sharing? We have learned the Government knew about the Christmas day bomber. They were going to detain and question him when he landed, if you can believe that. But no one told the airline about him. No Sky Marshall's were on board the plane.

My concern is that there are too many hands in this cook pot. Too many filters for information to pass through. Not enough people putting eyes on the total picture. Sure someone sees a man is on the watch list. But someone else sees he applied for a visa. Someone else hears form his dad about him being a possible threat. There is too many someones. There is no centralization, no hub which this data passes through.

Someone dropped the ball, but no heads will roll. The President can say the buck stops here all he wants but so what? If the Christmas bomber hadn't gotten his panties in a twist he could have set the bomb off. Almost 300 souls on that plane could have been lost. If the plane had come down into Detroit the death toll could have been a thousand!

Solutions? One, we need a new Secretary of Homeland Security. Two, this department need to be the central warehouse for all data collected foreign and domestic. The FBI handles domestic. The CIA foreign. Three, eliminate the other departments and make them all sub sets of Homeland Security. Four, eliminate all Czar positions related to security, I think there are at least two. The secretaries of Defence, State and Homeland Security have to be approved by Congress. I think the FBI and CIA director does too. We don't need anyone working with our security that doesn't get screened through Congress.

Next we need hard and fast rules about coming into this country. On a watch list? No entry. From a country supporting terrorism? No entry. No passport? No entry. Get the picture? These rules apply to everyone. No exceptions. There is a report someone vouched for the Christmas bomber when he first boarded his plane even though he didn't have a passport, paid in cash, was on a watch list, had no luggage, etc. The days of "he's with me" are over. This could get us killed!

Finally, even though the President says "the buck stops here" don't be fooled. He flies on his own jet with fighter escort. He has armies of people protecting him. If something goes down it will be us who die. I'm sure he would get upset and maybe even work up a tear but that won't do much good when we are all splattered on the ground.

Maybe we should just make all airplane passengers eat a ham sandwich before they can board?