Terrorist info ignored, too much data or security failure?

I can tell you that I had a very suspicious thing happen at our apartments. A Pakistani national moved out of our apartment and left anti American propaganda in the apartment. The thing is, he skipped out on the apartment the day after Bin Laden was killed.
We called the police and the FBI and no one even wanted to look at it. We finally called Homeland security who turned us over to immigration who then turned it back over to the FBI who finally showed up.
They were (finally) very concerned and chewed is out for touching things.
I told them that we didn’t touch anything until the FBI said they weren’t interested.
They found out that the guy went to Dubai. Still don’t know if he was a bad guy or not. He was a pharmacist.

@dabbler
It sounds like incompetence to me.
I am disgusted by the corruption of both parties and their extreme views.
It is clearly time the L Wingers face reality and stop placating terrorist. The History of WW2 says placating does not work.
These two bombers should not have been aloud to live in the US.

@philosopher I don’t see any signs of anyone (including L wingers) placating terrorists. In what ways do you see that happening?

But I sure do suspect flat-out incompetence. As in @Judi‘s story, I bet tons of tips are ignored by agents who’d rather sit at their desks than follow up.

@dabbler
There are people that will not say some people want jihad. They insist that we treat them fairly.There may be some decent Muslims but my city lived through 9/11/01. I know people who lived through it. I use to work a few blocks away.
These two barbarians pretended to be American’s. It time people stop making excuses for them.
I distrust them at this point. I do not give a dam if, my attitude is politically incorrect.
Obama placaters them.
I could write ten pages on this.

I have a lot of Muslim friends. Most Muslims think about terrorists like Christians think about Westboro Baptist Church. They find them disgusting and the opposite of what Mohamad preached.
It’s worse than not being politically correct. It’s being ignorant and bigoted.

@Philosopher is right, it’s either incompetence or laziness, same deal when Bush came into office and ignored Clinton’s info on Terrorist, I am personally beginning to believe that alot of this stuff is allowed to happen – so they can infringe upon and take away more of our rights.. ? The constitution is in shreds man..

I think information comes in all the time. From what I understand there was some follow up regarding the older brother who committed the Boston bombing, but the US supposedly decided he was ok. Or, maybe they were following him and knew he was still suspicious? I don’t think we necessarily know.

Then you hear a story like @Judi‘s and it can make you crazy. Very similar to people calling in about men taking flying lessons, but not caring about learning how to land. A couple years before 9/11 I was circling Miami airport and there was a car with no one in it basically parked in the circle. I called Miami airport security on my limited minutes on my cell phone, first having to pay to get the phone number and security said to me, “so? What do you want us o do about it?” Idiots! Even back then people were not supposed to leave their cars unattended and it was Miami airport, not some 6 gate airport out in BFE. I was so pissed off at the incompetence and that I bothered.

A few weeks before the underwear bomber I flew out of Detroit and the security was unbelievable. Tighter than I had ever seen at any airport. Metal detectors set to detect the littlest piece of metal. I set it off wearing what I always wear when I travel and have never triggered anything. Not even in airports like DC and NYC. Many of the people around me also commented on security that day. Then what do you know, a few weeks later this nut job wears a bomb coming into Detroit. A friend of mine said probably their had been chatter and so they tightened up security. She said you wouldn’t send your kids to school on a bus if you heard some of what is said.

@philosopher “people that will not say some people want jihad” They are certainly lunatics. Clearly there are some who preach jihad and encourage it.

I’m not aware of any way Obama placates any terrorists, but if you something specific on that I’d like to know about it. He doesn’t do everything AIPAC wants him to but as far as I can tell his approach mitigates some of the tensions that previous war-happy administrations have cultivated.

And “Fairly” on the other hand is quite a matter of interpretation. I think the rights of people in custody of the government are part of what historically distinguished the U.S. from previous world powers that are strong enough to do whatever they want. Lately we seem to be sliding off that standard. @strangeuniverse is right about the constitution being ignored except alongside flag-waving as a superficial foil.

Personally I think treating all people fairly and carefully will help us better identify actual terrorists at least by cultivating the respect that’s been flushed down the tubes with the Patriot Act and the recent NDA that puts into law the power to detain people indefinitely without trial or stated charges. That kind of respect and trust of the government is necessary for people who can help stop real terrorists to feel comfortable doing so.

It seems to be incompetence. We were warned by the Russians that this guy could be a problem. We investigated and decided there was nothing. Now we find out that he had jihad links on his facebook and twitter. He was living on welfare, luckily we paid for his time to make the bombs as well as paying for the material to do so. Hell, we’re the state sponsor of terror. We don’t want tocall it Islamic Terrorism even though it’s pretty obvious that’s what it is. Domestic or home grown terrorist ithink they want to call it. At least that’s better than workplace violence.

We’ll never make any progress on this unless we are able to identify what is really going on. Trying to sugar coat it with ambigous words only encourages the incompetence.

@Jaxk Why are they reluctant to call it Islamic terrorism? I don’t get it. I do understand not wanting to stir up some other maniacs who might go out and beat up a Muslim person or set fire to a mosque, but we need to know what we are dealing with. When a fanatic militant group does something crazy we name the group and state they are from. When the LDS church has some extreme sect forcing girls to marry at age 14 we name it, even though the average Mormon is not forced to do anything of the sort. When some lunatic Christian wants to schedule a Quran burning for all to see we say what church it is. Plus, I’m curious, how long would someone need to be a citizen to consider them a home grown terrorist? What are they calling the Boston terrorists? I haven’t been watching the news coverage much. One was a citizen, one not, but both legal in the US.

Interesting how all the extensive and expensive anti-terrorism efforts were so uneffective in this case. Makes you wonder how deeply flawed is the approach of calling these events ‘terrorism’ at all.

The 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was treated as a crime, not terrorism. The perpetrators were successfully rounded up and in 1997 convicted. The approach of the the FBI and CIA at that time resulted in substantial information about Al Qaeda, including their intent to fly planes into buildings.

But for reasons that may never see the full light of day that approach and the intelligence gathered were completely dismissed by the next administration. Instead we got a military response to the problem, starting two wars. And we got justifications for seriously compromising our civil liberties that the current administration has even expanded on with the recent NDA provisions for indefinite military detention without trial or charges.

Too many people thinking that paying taxes is a stupid thing.

The FBI needs enough people and they have to pay good salaries to attract talent.

Who needs talent when the info is being thrown in your lap – and you dismiss it? And Taxes – we came to America from England to escape taxes – now we are doing the same thing here… what would George Washington think about this?

@strangeuniverse
George Washington would think throw them all out. They all work for the lobbyist not us.

Excuse me but I think it’s a miracle nothing else has happened. If we want to keep a little bit of privacy and preserve any civil liberties then we take a certain amount of risk.
Terrorists are like cockroaches. The only way to be sure to kill them all is to poison them so bad that the environment is toxic.

@Jaxk
That is Obama and that is why our Ambassador was killed in Liberia. He has this naive attitude. He thinks if, we treat them nicely they will stop wanting to kill us all. That simply does not work with savages or bullies.
It reminds me of when I as a teenager in school and a male student stole my bus change. I told him I saw it and he could not do this. He started beating me and I fought back. I was an A student but the Principal said, I was wrong. I was suppose to excuse this moron and bully.
When anyone attempts to hurt other civilized humans they have the right to stand up for themselves, their nation or civilization.
It is time to take off the gloves so to speak and tell these terrorist savages you kill American’s and we will track you down as we did Osama and annihilate every dam one of you. To their culture kindness is weakness.
They do not want to assimilate into American culture. They want to take over the US and world. To force us to live as Muslims under Saharia Law or die.
Naive and foolish people can call me any name they like. I live in reality and you are living in a world that does not exist.
If you new History you would comprehend that the Europeans placated Hitler. America saved them. Despite that they prefer to forget this and are currently allowing extremist to invade their nations.
We should not allow anyone who supports terrorism to live in the US and anyone who wishes to live here should investigated. We should not let anyone who may wishes us harm on a plane to the US. Israel does this any we should too. Profiling to save life’s is not wrong.

Recall that Obama is the president who did this : “track you down as we did Osama”
Obama is certainly not perfect in my mind, but he does not seem to be coddling terrorists. Those predator strikes certainly don’t seem friendly to me.

Gloves off doesn’t have to mean going in with the whole war machine. Strategic strikes can get the job done. And the big wars really do piss off whole countries full of people with reasons to hate the U.S. that have nothing to do with Islam.

@dabbler
We should not be involved in their civil wars. No matter what we do for them they will hate us. We should protect our nation and our citizens.
They invade our country to kill us.

@philosopher “They invade our country to kill us.” The very difficult part is to identify who’s the ‘they’. There are a lot of people who come to the U.S. from the same places and with the same apparent background, just to make a better life for themselves and their kids. Unless you are a Native American (American Indian / Siberian-American) the same is true of you or your ancestors.

I’d agree too that we have no business in anyone’s civil war. But these drone strikes are ‘police actions’ that theoretically take out terrorists with minimal collateral damage. We all know that in practice they are far from that ideal but they’re much better than the full-on wars the U.S. fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bush is a worthless immoral asshole. My list of reasons I disrespect him could fill a book.
We did not move there and pretend to be one of them. In order to murder them. Our soldiers worked very hard to free them and help them. Most hated Hussein.
That war should not have happen. There were No weapons of mass destruction.
My ancestors came here and assimilated into the America. They became part of America. They worked very hard and contributed to the US. This is what most immigrant American families did. These are the people that contribute to the US. The children of American immigrants often make very significant contributions to the US. Most do not bomb people or kill people.