After a long career of straight-faced service, John Brennan, President Obama’s deputy national-security adviser, has started to snarl. In a USA Today op-ed, he rants about how “politically-motivated criticism” of the administration’s handling of the failed Christmas Day bombing serves “the goals of al-Qaeda.” You don’t get it, he fumes: My critics are “naïve,” “fear-mongering,” and “absurd.” Sen. Kit Bond (R., Mo.), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, tells National Review Online that Brennan’s op-ed is “baffling” and part of a “political mess at the White House” that “puts our country at risk.”

Bond says that Brennan “needs to go,” and is no longer “credible.” Brennan’s recent “troubling decisions,” he adds, “have destroyed my confidence in him.” Firing Brennan, he says, “would be part” of fixing Obama’s national-security woes, though not enough. “A drastic change in policy is needed,” he says. “Our problem now is that we have to wonder whether we can trust [Brennan] after he has been a mouthpiece for the political arm that I thought only came out of the White House press office.”

“It is hard to trust anyone in the White House right now,” Bond says. “The national-security team has become a bench of political spokespeople. It doesn’t speak well of the individuals, but let’s remember that these continued attacks must be coming from the top, from the president himself, to try and deflect the mistakes they made in giving Miranda rights to the Christmas Day bomber.”