Did that get your attention?

The headline may be a bit of a stretch for the article John Brennan rails on Dick Cheney, explains ‘systemic failure’.

There is this quote from Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R) of Michigan, the ranking member of the House intelligence committee:

“In 2004, we focused on making sure that we were collecting all of the information that we needed to collect,” said Mr. Hoekstra, speaking of post-9/11 reforms.

“The challenge that we now face is that we are collecting so much information, we are sharing it, we now need to develop the capabilities to do a better job of analysis,” he added.

By my interpretation, the reaction to the original 9/11 attack was a little misguided.  Just as in this latest situation, we had the information, but we didn’t analyze and act on it.  The Patriot Act, which promoted the use of unconstitutional means to gather more information, went after the exactly wrong target.  Rather than increase the flood of information we had, we needed to increase our ability to analyze and act on the information we had.

It made no sense to add to the burden of too much information on those who had to sift through it and find what was important.  Yet, that was exactly what Cheney insisted on.  Now he is blaming Obama for his own failures.