Excellent commentary on recent events surrounding the thwarted Christmas Day bombing and the world of intelligence and espionage.  We are ill served by both politicians and the general public who are ignorant of the realities of those world. Consider this excerpt from the article.

"Yet over the past two weeks, we have watched the unedifying spectacle of politicians and bureaucrats, mired in a Washington environment defined by political fear, posturing shamelessly over the would-be airline bomber. A wealthy nation that refuses to invest sufficiently in available technology, or to put up with travel delays necessary to see whether passengers are carrying explosives onto airplanes, chooses instead to excoriate the intelligence community for failing to see unerringly into the minds and hearts of men.

Rather than admit to the hard fact that we must always rely on someone’s subjective assessment of tolerable risk, politicians are vilifying those who put together our terrorism watch lists, who are simply following threat protocols. Meanwhile. . ."

Read the rest of the article here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/opinion/10grenier.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th