The problem is, you're ignoring false positives. Reports of potential threats happen frequently. The overwhelming majority of them are false positives. > Did y

The problem is, you're ignoring false positives. Reports of potential threats happen frequently. The overwhelming majority of them are false positives. > Did you even read the article? ... An actual identified terrorist showing up at a US flight school. Did I read the article? "A foreign intelligence service promptly reported that he had connections with a foreign terrorist group" -> Not exactly an actual identified terrorist. "Had connections with a foreign terrorist group" could be anything. And which foreign intelligence service? Britain? Israel? South Africa? Mexico? In retrospect, it's obvious, sure. But at the time, not so much. He wasn't a convicted criminal. He was someone who was probably friends with another guy they suspected, or went to the same mosque. If he was someone with a criminal record, of course he'd have gotten a more thorough treatment. > The agents who had him in custody were begging for permission to investigate what was on his laptop and they were denied. Probably those damned civil rights and limited search and seizure things. > The team that was charged with the job of testing airport security were actively prevented from doing their jobs Again, your read of the article is questionable. They identified weaknesses in the system, and no resources were spent on those weaknesses. But there's other weaknesses too, lots of them. Yes, in retrospect, it seems obvious that there were weaknesses. But there's many potential targets, and there's not an unlimited budget. Yeah, after things go wrong it's very easy to say something should have been done beforehand. > I don't see how anyone could brush this off as just "20/20 hindsight". It is 20/20 hindsight. There's thousands of false positives. The article is written with an assured tone because they know how history happened. How many times have there been warnings of an imminent North Korean strike into South Korea? Dozens? I do know the stats on Israeli warnings about their neighbors mobilizing near them - over two dozen times in the last 50 years, full military mobilizations... how many became invasions? 2 out of those 24+? There'll probably be clues after any bad event happens that it was going to happen... that doesn't necessarily mean anyone was being negligent. Also, a little more friendliness and less snark when you comment? Something like, "I disagree with your interpretation" instead of "Did you even read the article?