Obama's Counter Terror Hawaiian Vacation

Obama may be in Hawaii, but he and his beefed up traveling team are on ramped up counterterrorism duty:

Against that backdrop, the White House has made substantive and public relations changes to Mr. Obama’s vacation, adopting what Juan C. Zarate, a counterterrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, calls a strategy of “taking no chances and assuming the worst.”

It was no accident that Mr. Brennan called President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen on Christmas Eve; intelligence experts believe the man accused in the bomb plot last Christmas, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, trained in Yemen and obtained explosives there. The White House said Mr. Brennan reminded Mr. Saleh of “the importance of taking forceful action” against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the militant Islamist network. Read the whole thing at NYT