Napolitano Builds Up Undie Bomber: Terrorists Went To 'Great Lengths'

Like a football coach trying to explain away the trouncing his team just took by building up the opponent, Janet Napolitano is seeking to diminish the Obama administration's NWA 253 failure by exaggerating the cunning of the Christmas Day plot.

The hapless Homeland Security head has a 679-word piece in today's USA Today basically promising to do better.  She begins with this line [emphasis added]:

Friday's attempted terrorist attack against Northwest Flight 253 near Detroit is a powerful illustration that terrorists will go to great lengths to try to defeat the security measures that have been put in place since September 11, 2001.

"Great lengths?" Really?  You buy a plane ticket for a kid, stick a few ounces of explosives in his nappies, then hope he'll make it onboard and remember which end to light.  

And far from choosing someone with a good chance of completing his murderous mission, the plotters picked a guy with enough red flags surrounding him to have stocked a May Day parade back in the old Soviet Union.  Need we count some of the ways?

• Denied British visa.
• On some kind of US watch list.
• Father warned our embassy and various intel agencies.
• Paid cash.
• One-way ticket.
• No checked luggage.

Napolitano would want us to imagine diabolical masterminds behind a fiendish plot that the Obama admin might be excused for not undoing. But far from demonstrating the "great lengths" to which the terrorists will go, what happened on December 25th illustrates only the deep incompetence of those responsible for stopping it.

Will the MSM note Napolitano's latest lame excuse?  How much longer can she possibly remain in office?

Photo Getty Images via USA Today.