STRANGE MANEUVERINGS – AT 9:13 A.M. ET:  The administration, in the person of its national security adviser, is shrewdly preparing the American people for the bad news contained in a report to be issued later today.  From Fox News:

James Jones, a retired four-star Marine general, says Americans will feel "a certain shock" when a report is released today detailing the intelligence failures that could have prevented the Christmas Day attack.

Americans will feel "a certain shock" when a report is released today detailing the intelligence failures that could have prevented the alleged Christmas Day airline bomber from ever boarding the plane.

In an interview published Thursday in USA Today, White House national security adviser James Jones said President Obama "is legitimately and correctly alarmed that things that were available, bits of information that were available, patterns of behavior that were available, were not acted on."

"That's two strikes," he was quoted as saying, referring to the failed Northwest jet attack and the shooting massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, in November. The Army base attack left 13 dead after officials failed to act on intelligence identifying suspected gunman Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as a threat to fellow soldiers.

Jones, a retired four-star Marine general, told the paper that Obama "certainly doesn't want that third strike, and neither does anybody else."

Oh good, I'm glad the president doesn't want a third strike.  And I'm genuinely glad that Jones mentioned Fort Hood, a successful attack that didn't have to happen, and which has been forgotten in all the bother over the Christmas airliner attack.

Now, will someone please utter the following declaration:  "There will be no more political correctness."

Political correctness is choking our intelligence efforts, just as it is choking our universities and elements of the press.  If there's a blessing in disguise here – and, to use Churchill's phrase, the disguise is very thick indeed – it's that we may finally be willing to confront the disgrace and danger of political correctness.

After Fort Hood, the first reaction of the Army's chief of staff was to worry publicly that the attack might hurt diversity in the military.  The officer involved, General George Casey, should have been handed his retirement papers.

Maybe there's change coming that we can believe in.  I'll believe it when I see it.

January 7, 2009