Jon Stewart Rips US Intelligence Community a New One

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Jon Stewart used the opening minutes of his first 2010 episode of The Daily Show to eviscerate the U.S. intelligence community for failing to stop the guy with the "Doomsday underpants" who attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound airplane on Christmas day.

As he detailed the information that various intelligence officials had in hand prior to the alleged underpants bomber setting foot on the plane, Stewart was incredulous, particularly about the fact that the alleged bomber's father went to U.S. authorities to warn them that his son had become radicalized and posed a security threat.

"I too have a tendency to ignore messages from Nigerian bankers who wish to help me," Stewart quipped, "but when they show up in person and aren’t asking for a money order but instead turning in their own son maybe that conversation doesn’t get filed under 'spam.'”

Saying that the one-way, paid-with-cash plane ticket coupled with no checked luggage should've been an obvious "hey dudes pull me out of line" clue to security officials, Stewart added, "It’s December, he’s going from Nigeria to Amsterdam to Detriot without a coat? With a one-way ticket? Do you think he’s going to Detroit to start a better life? What do you think he’s going there because he thinks there are lots of jobs?"

To illustrate the horrific absurdity of the situation, Stewart used an action figure to dramatize how not much has changed in the eight years since a man -- who also had a one-way ticket paid for with cash and checked no luggage -- used the same type of explosives as the Christmas day underwear bomber, only the explosives were moved up from the shoes to the underwear.

When I read that officials apparently think that the answer to underwear and shoe bombers is to take quasi-naked images of airline passengers and make everyone sit in their seats for the last hour of a flight, I know I feel super-safe. Not.

Where's Jack Bauer when you need him?