Obama promises action on terror scare

President Obama declared this afternoon that "the bottom line" is that the government had enough information to stop the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a US airliner, but failed to connect the dots.

"We have to do better and we will do better," he said at the White House, after meeting with 20 top national security officials he summoned to the situation room for a detailed briefing on the investigation and the status of the reviews he ordered on terrorist watch lists and on passenger screening.

Obama said he wants recommendations this week on how to improve both and wants them implemented immediately. "We face a challenge of the utmost urgency," he added.

Since he took office, Obama said, US forces have "taken the fight to Al Qaeda," disrupting plots and protecting Americans.

But, he conceded, when a suspected terrorist is able to board a US bound plane and nearly ignite an explosive, the "system has failed in a potentially disastrous way."

He also announced that the administration will stop repatriating detainees to Yemen from the prison at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, saying that the situation in Yemen was too unsettled.

An Al Qaeda affiliate based Yemen has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was in retaliation for US-supported airstrikes on its hideouts. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian who claims ties to Al Qaeda, has also reportedly said he received instruction from operatives in Yemen.

The Guantanamo decision drew immediate fire from civil rights groups pushing Obama to close Guantanamo, as he pledged to do by this month -- a deadline he almost certainly will not meet. About half the remaining 198 detainees at Guantanamo are from Yemen, after six were sent there just before the plane incident.

"Dozens of men from Yemen who have been cleared for release after extensive scrutiny by the government?s Guantànamo Review Task Force are about to be left in limbo once more due to politics, not facts. Many are about to begin their ninth year in indefinite detention," the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement. "Halting the repatriation of Yemeni men cleared by the Task Force after months of careful review is unconscionable. It will also effectively prevent any meaningful progress towards closing Guantánamo, which President Obama has repeatedly argued will make our nation safer."

On the other side, Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, said Obama should completely abandon his plans to close the Guantanamo facility.

"Unless the administration abandons its ill-conceived and politically motivated plans to close Gitmo, most Americans won't find much solace in transferring detainees that would have gone to Yemen and housing them on American soil," Issa said in a statement. "Hopefully, recent events will have awakened the President to the reality that our national and homeland security must supersede the politics of the moment."

But Obama rejected that advice. "Make no mistake," he said, "we will close Guantanamo prison," which he repeated has become a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda.

In his brief remarks, the president confirmed that hundreds of names have been added to terrorist watch and no-fly lists.

Obama also confirmed the Monday directive from the Transportation Security Administration to airlines to give full-body, pat-down searches to US-bound travelers from Yemen, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and 11 other countries with suspected terrorist ties.

Republicans, meanwhile, are all over Obama for his administration's reported plans to try the bombing suspect in civilian court, saying he is an "enemy combatant" who should go before a military tribunal.

"The administration?s treatment could afford a murderous terrorist the opportunity to negotiate a plea bargain and a lesser punishment -- and that is not acceptable," the second-ranking House Republican, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, said in a statement.

"Terrorists who come to our country to kill men, women, and children should not be given options when they fail. These murderers are war-time combatants, and are not equivalent to drug dealers, or thieves whom the government can choose to negotiate with for additional information on other criminals," Cantor added. "Instead, we should develop a no-nonsense policy that the United States will not presume that foreign nationals caught attempting to execute or carry out terrorist acts on U.S. soil are automatically entitled to a trial in civilian courts. For 10 months, the administration and many on Capitol Hill have been unwilling to call a terrorist a terrorist. Instead of blame games, we need to strengthen what works in our system, fix what does not, and do what makes sense to ensure that we are always steps ahead of terrorists trying to kill Americans."