The attack . . .

Amid all the uproar over the failed Christmas Day terror attack, one thing no one seems to be noting is that the incident is a goldmine of information for American intelligence agencies. Capturing the would-be mass murderer alive - all credit to the passengers and crew - is an intelligence coup, albeit one that no one's going to brag about.

It'd be nice to see it pay off with a midnight raid in Yemen in a few weeks, though the odds are that if it does we won't hear about it. I know a few SEALs whom I'm sure are literally salivating at the chance to get the call.

Meanwhile, the problems with Homeland Insecurity aren't exactly new; many people have been writing about them for years now. (Shameless plug department: Check out Rogue Warrior: Vengeance for a long but only partial list.) Fixing things will take . . . a lot more than I can outline here.

Fortunately, the terrorists are generally more psychotic than skilled. The media makes them out to be supermen; that's nonsense. This whole brouhaha is starting to look a little like Tet - the bad guys lost, but the media makes them look like winners.

I mean think about it. This asshole set his balls on fire, and the media is making him and the dickheads that set him up look like Osama bin Einsteins. Come on.

The Christmas Day plan, like a lot of terrorist plans, was seriously flawed. And here's another thing you won't hear: Part of the reason the plan didn't work - admittedly only part - has to do with the restrictions and procedures that make it slightly harder to blow up an airliner than it used to be. Take those away, and the outcome here would have been different.

Probably. Like I say, these guys aren't necessarily the most effective paranoid schizo crazies in the world, just the blood-thirstiest.

If we really want to do something about the problem, we have to attack it at the source, again and again. Hello Yemen, hello other armpit capitals of the world.

In the meantime, I'll be wearing freshly laundered boxers every time I travel.