Blame Game

Obama: We 'Failed to Connect the Dots'

Ends detainee releases to Yemen and admits intel fails.

On the same day that the Obama administration announced it would stop the practice of transferring terror detainees to Yemen—where two ex-detainees colluded with al Qaeda and the Christmas bomber last year—the president met with his national-security team for two hours. Afterward, he made an announcement about the accused Nigerian bomber: "This was not failure to collect intelligence, it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had.... We have to do better, we will do better and we have to do it quickly. American lives are on the line." The message was similar to the one he made during his Hawaiian holiday; describing the terror threat against America as "a challenge of the utmost urgency," Obama said he'd work to get intelligence agencies more efficiently communicating.