From The 'Duh' Files

From AFP via Yahoo, a voice from the peanut gallery:

US 'dangerously' unprepared for any terror attack: 9/11 panel:

Mon Dec 5, 6:36 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States remains 'dangerously' unprepared for potential terrorist assaults on US soil more than four years after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, members of a former commission that probed the attacks said.

The first thought I had was "Well no shit". How can anyone possibly be totally prepared for a terrorist attack? You can't. No one can predict exactly what, or everything, terrorists will do.

The administration of US President George W. Bush has been distracted by fighting terrorism abroad to the point that the country is 'not as safe as we ought to be,' said Thomas Kean, the president of the now-disbanded 9/11 Commission.

Yes, that minor little distraction 'over there'. Exactly - over there, not over here.
That 'distracted' administration has done a pretty good job of keeping the terrorism over there.

'Some of the failures are shocking. Four years after 9/11, it is a scandal that police and firefighters in large cities still can't talk to each other when they are hit with a major crisis,' Kean said.

I'll give the idiot that. Until egos get out of the way, those lines of communication will always be an issue.

'It's scandalous that airline passengers are still not screened against all names on a terrorist watch list. It is scandalous that we still allocate scarce homeland security dollars on the basis of pork-barrel spending and not on risk,' he said.

I'm guessing that particular list is no where near complete. The way government employees typically operate, it will always be four or five years out of date.

[...]
However, White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters that the Bush administration had taken the fight to the enemy, although he acknowledged there was more to do in protecting America from possible terror assaults.

McClellan said the best approach, however, was to wage the war on violent extremism overseas.

'The best way to protect the American people is to take the fight to the enemy, to stay on the offensive. We are taking the fight to the enemy abroad, and by doing so, that is keeping them from plotting and planning to attack inside America,' McClellan said.

'We are grateful that we haven't been attacked since September 11. But we have taken significant steps to better protect the American people at home. There is more to do,' said McClellan.

Yeah. What he said.

[...]
The ex-commissioners assessed the government's response to 41 recommendations they made in the original 2004 report. On 18 points it gave the government a failing grade, delivering an especially harsh judgment on the government's treatment of detained suspected terrorists.

'US treatment of detainees has elicited broad criticism, and makes it harder to build the necessary alliances to cooperation effectively with partners in a global war on terror,' they said.

So we've fixed over half of the issues, and are working on the rest, and the biggest issue they see is so-called mistreatment of prisoners?
Now I haven't researched those 41 issues, so I don't really know what all they are. But if not wearing gloves while pissing on the Koran is the worst post-9/11 security problem we have, I would guess a few other 'big issues' are going to turn out to be relatively minor yet extremely distorted by more anti-administration soapboxers.

On the same token, I'm not advocating sitting back, relaxing and licking our asses. We should be careful. But let's not get stupid or paranoid about it either.