Obama Underwear Bomber Fail

The president's speech today acknowledged failure in a generic way - but no particular failure was mentioned and nobody will be held to account.

So my spy-minded friend's prediction that Obama would get tough with intelligence failures turns out wrong.

The president's speech today acknowledged failure in a generic way - but no particular failure was mentioned and nobody will be held to account. Did the Nigerian embassy forward the warnings from the bomber's father energetically enough? Why did U.S. intelligence agencies fail to know (or fail to act on the knowledge) that the bomber had been stripped of his British visa? Why was he not placed on the no-fly list after the warnings began to move? Why was he not chosen for secondary screening?

Are we asked to believe that this cavalcade of mistakes could have happened without any identifiable individual in the agencies doing something wrong?

Or just that if an identifiable individual does something wrong, that person should never be singled out for discipline or termination? Does intel mean impunity?