Review this

Dana Milbank is getting his own Sunday column at the WaPo -- serious competition for Maureen Dowd and yet another example of that newspaper's descent into irrelevancy. Today, he praises the president...

For Obama, a former president of the Harvard Law Review, the response to the Under-bomber has been a veritable Review Revue. And it's not just a semantic thing: His instinct when facing all types of problems -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, the Fort Hood shootings, the pending Gitmo closing -- has led him to the same approach: Order a review. It is a hallmark of his governing style.

Arguably, this is exactly the type of leadership a president should provide, cool and deliberate even in a crisis. After eight years of seat-of-the-pants leadership, calm reflection and reasoned action has much to recommend it; if Dick Cheney were president today, we might already have invaded Iran to punish al-Qaeda for training the accused Nigerian bomber in Yemen.

...only to criticize him for the same thing in the next paragraph, and using the words of an ABC correspondent to boot.

On the other hand, the take-a-deep-breath response has opened up Obama to criticism that he has been slow and wavering. ABC News's Rick Klein suggested Tuesday that "a touch of anger" would benefit Obama. "This is one time where Mr. Cool doesn't need to be."

As he walked into the Grand Foyer of the White House on Tuesday afternoon, the president looked for a balance between the too-hot words of his predecessor and the too-cold accusations of his critics.

Not to get all Bob Somerby on you, but did he? Did he really look for such a balance? Or is this, as Milbank himself wrote a few paragraphs earlier, the man's governing style. And geez, Milbank apparently does not like the word "review."

Yet when it came to questions about consequences -- Would people lose their jobs? Would the intelligence community be restructured again? -- he was not ready to answer. "We will make a summary of this preliminary report public within the next few days," he offered. He mentioned his reviews 11 times.

And then, more from an ABC reporter, who like everyone in the press, it seems, is obsessed with seeing a head roll, any head.

"Is anybody at all going to lose their job over this?" asked ABC News's Jake Tapper.

"Well, again, the review is ongoing," Gibbs answered.

President Bush opposed the 9-11 commission for god's sake. Moreover, I don't recall any demand for peoples' jobs when the worst terrorist massacre on American soil took place under his watch. But then, he was a man of action, not one to consider the facts.

The sources' description of Williams' evidence provides the most extensive disclosure to date of what prompted the veteran counterterrorism agent from Phoenix to send an electronic communication to FBI headquarters in Washington asking that the FBI canvass all U.S. flight schools to identify other Middle Eastern students who might be training.

He also asked that a system be set up to allow federal immigration officials to warn local FBI offices when new students came to train at aviation schools. The FBI had not acted on his suggestions before Sept. 11.

Williams identified several Arab students at Arizona aviation schools, including one school in Prescott, who were seeking training in aviation engineering, flight lessons and airport operations. He had ascertained that at least one of the students had also made inquiries about airport security operations, the officials said.

Williams' July 10 memo — which he marked "routine," indicating there was no imminent threat — was sent to about 10 officials who worked in the Radical Fundamentalist Unit, the research unit and the bin Laden desk in FBI headquarters in Washington and for the anti-terrorism squad at the FBI's office in New York, officials said.

Williams has told congressional investigators he subsequently received a message from headquarters indicating terrorism experts were evaluating his intelligence and his request for a canvass of all U.S. flight schools and that it might be referred to the FBI's office in Portland, Ore., officials said.

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called the memo "highly embarrassing to the bureau" and called for its public release after a briefing Wednesday from FBI Director Robert Mueller and Williams.

He said the FBI agents in Arizona, as well as those investigating Zacarias Moussaoui in Minnesota, had sniffed out aspects of the plot — "they were on the ball" — but their warnings went unheard by higher headquarters.

"I'm not satisfied with the response by the FBI today, or their performance," Shelby said.

Another member of the intelligence committee, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., agreed, telling CBS News it was hard to understand why no action was taken on the memo.

As the political battle waged on over what information the government had before Sept. 11, Vice President Dick Cheney denied Wednesday that a flurry of public terror warnings was prompted by criticism over how the Bush administration handled pre-Sept. 11 warnings of an attack.

Cheney said "irresponsible" comments by Democrats did not influence the administration's warnings to the public this week.

"The fact is there is reason to believe that the threat level has increased somewhat," Cheney said on CNN's "Larry King Live."

Did anyone lose their job? Quite the contrary.

And, speaking of the irrelevancy of the WaPo, I present Sally Quinn.