Um, no... it's three strikes

At least...

White House national security adviser James Jones says Americans will feel "a certain shock" when they read an account being released Thursday of the missed clues that could have prevented the alleged Christmas Day bomber from ever boarding the plane.

"That's two strikes," Obama's top White House aide on defense and foreign policy issues said, referring to the foiled bombing of the Detroit-bound airliner and the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, in November. In that case, too, officials failed to act when red flags were raised about an Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Hasan. He has been charged with killing 13 people.

Jones said Obama "certainly doesn't want that third strike, and neither does anybody else."

Well, I certainly feel reassured, don't you? But in case anybody forgot, there was also a massive failure to communicate internally about threat warnings leading up to a certain event in 2001. After which we spent millions of dollars studying the failure (something we're good at), reshuffling the bureaucracy (something else we're good at), and then repeating the same mistakes (...ditto...). Eight years and two wars later, we're a couple trillion dollars poorer, and legitimately more concerned about our security than before.

More studies can't fix the problem, because they focus on wire diagrams versus ideologies and inconvenient truths. The sooner Americans stop putting up with cosmetic rearranging of deck chairs on the Titanic, the better.