Yep, our intelligence services plain suck. Simple as that. 9/11 broadsided us without a clue. And now we get lots of possible false alarms (though I think the new years ones were probably real).
We need to clean house fast.
Our intelligence programs are good given what they're designed to do and the restrictions placed on them. Before 9/11 the CIA and domestic organizations were barely allowed to communicate; our Intelligence Community was budget-gutted over the past decade; satellite photos of suspected WMD facilities can't be verified without HUMINT; NSA can't use the millions of pieces of information they receive everyday without the proper tools, personnel, and Arab-language experts; the CIA can't infiltrate al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations without mingling with not-so-nice people once in a while; young Arab males in the U.S. on phony or expired visas can't be watched or investigated without hysterical shrieks of "racial profiling" being raised; little old ladies must be cavity-searched in our airports while young Arab males are not in order to appease the PC fascists (post-9/11!!!).
Now, when you couple that with the successes we've had (preventing New Years 2000 attacks that were planned; uncovering terrorist cells in the U.S. near Buffalo and elsewhere; the capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed; the prevention of numerous attacks that the public will never know about; etc.), our intell services have done a good job. Its our Oprahized public and the spineless Frank Church/Jimmy Carter-type politicians that need to be negated so that the IC can do its job. Freegards...