WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama on Tuesday afternoon gave a harsh tongue-lashing to his National Security team and promised further steps soon to toughen airline security and shape up the nation’s terror watchdogs because “American lives are on the line.”

The intelligence failure around the attempted Christmas Day attack was a “screw up” and that they only dodged a bullet because of brave individuals of Flight 253, he said.

“While there will be a tendency for finger-pointing, I will not tolerate it,” the president said.

Immediately after leaving his meeting, Obama told the press in the Grand Foyer that the system failed in a “potentially disastrous way,” because the intelligence community failed to connect the dots between information that was there which could have disrupted the attack.

“We have to do better, and we will do better, and we have to do it quickly,” a still-seething Obama told reporters.

The leaders of each administration agency and department at the meeting took responsibility for failures on their watch. Obama said he was pleased that there were no alibis offered at the meeting for “shortfalls.”

Obama bluntly blamed the intelligence community for the politically embarrassing failure on his watch to communicate with each other — a series of snafus that recalled the interagency bungling before the 9/11 attacks.

In public, Obama opted for politer language, but kept up the angry tone. “The system has failed in a potentially disastrous way,” he admitted. “Our intelligence community failed to connect those dots which would have placed the suspect on the no-fly list.

“It is increasingly clear that intelligence was not fully analyzed or fully leveraged,” Obama said. “That’s not acceptable, and I will not tolerate it.”

Though there was no specific finger-pointing at any of the 20 advisers in the meeting, Obama delivered an unmistakable repudiation of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s statement that “the system worked” when nearly 300 people could have been killed.

The disaster, he said, “was averted by brave individuals, not because the system worked, and that is not acceptable.”

Congressman Peter King of Long Island, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, told reporters that Obama’s remarks are a likely prelude to some high-profile firings.

“He seems to be genuinely angry,” King said, “and I would think that’s paving the way for someone to go.”

Analysts are also trying to figure out what Obama’s words mean, particularly for intelligence workers still reeling from the tragic killing of seven CIA officers by a Jordanian double agent in Afghanistan last week.

Obama officials have not ruled out seeing heads roll over the mistakes, but say such decisions will not come until after hearings are convened on Capitol Hill later this month.

Shortly after the meeting, John Brennan, Obama’s top White House counterterrorism aide, told reporters: “There are things we could do better.”

At issue were a number of key mistakes that Obama and Brennan had already identified.

Intelligence agencies knew, for instance, about the intent of radicals in Yemen to attack the US.

They also knew that the suspected bomber, Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had traveled to Yemen and that his father had contacted the US Embassy in Nigeria with concern that his son had fallen in with radical elements.

Meanwhile, according to Time Magazine this week, Obama is going to revise the outdated intelligence triggers set in place under Bush: “Obama’s team has decided that the old triggers that were put in place to flag intelligence analysts have not kept up with the evolving threat of Al-Qaeda and its sympathizers...there is little doubt that a new tone has been set among Obama’s senior staff.”