For all its successes, the U.S. anti-terror war was conceived in sin, the sin of U.S. government negligence. As much post-9/11 journalism has pointed out, there was the foreign-policy error of abandoning post-Soviet Afghanistan after having infused it with weapons, the CIA's failure to act more forcefully on tips and intercepts regarding al-Qaida operatives overseas, and the FBI's and INS's similar failings regarding suspicious characters already in the United States. And the FAA's (and the airlines', the airports', and security firms') breakdown on airport security. However, there has been a good deal less focus on another federal fubar, that ...