It is outrageous that our Nation's top intelligence officials were never even consulted on this vital decision.

Today's hearing focuses on two fundamental questions. Why was the Christmas Day bomber allowed to travel to the United States? And why was his name not included on the terrorist watchlist?

Very few of those 400,000 would have valid current visas.

One of the issues that really troubles me is a conversation that I had with a member of the intelligence community who said, you do not understand.

It is a point that has been of great concern to the Chairman and me for some time.

It is evident to me that you are going to get more information over a lengthier period of time than you are over just a few days.

But you did have the authority to deploy people to these high-risk posts.

I think it is very troubling that it was not and that three key intelligence officials were not asked their opinion.

Good intelligence is clearly critical to our ability to stop terrorist plots, and that is why I am very concerned about the decision to quickly charge Abdulmutallab in civilian court.

We dodged a bullet in the skies above Detroit on Christmas Day.

We know that those interrogations can provide critical intelligence, but the protections afforded by our civil justice system as opposed to the military tribunal system can encourage terrorists to lawyer up and to stop answering questions.

We did not choose this war. It was thrust upon us by terrorists who are determined to destroy our way of life.

I know it is probably not realistic to promise the American people that we will stop every attempted terrorist attack on our homeland, but I feel very strongly that must be our goal.

That is not how I read the law.

Intelligence failures, calls for reform, lack of accountability, failure to connect the dots.

The law is clear on who is in charge of the intelligence community.

The President must empower his senior officials to use every authority available to them to defeat the terrorist threat.

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 fundamentally changed our intelligence community.