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Kristol: Obama Can Still Designate Abdulmutallab An Enemy Combatant Unable to defend themselves on the merits, the administration and Democratic leaders are trying to change the topic to blaming Bush and Republicans. This is pathetic. First of all, Obama is president. He has been for almost a year. Whatever mistakes Bush did or didn’t make, Obama is in charge -- and the issue isn’t partisan score-settling, it’s whether the system he is in charge of is working. It isn’t. One reason the system isn’t is some of the people he put in charge -- Janet Napolitano and Dennis Blair come...

You’ve heard by now the Haskell story right? In case you haven’t let’s start there. Kurt Haskell is an attorney. He and his wife were in Amsterdam that day after a safari and Kurt witnessed the underwear bomber (Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab) before the flight being aided by what Haskell described to be an older Indian gentleman who was well dressed. [...] Mr. Haskell recalled that just before being questioned about the sharp dressed man incident a man was pulled into a room, handcuffed, and detained by authorities. Who was he? Why was he detained? Is there any relevance to...

The U.S. government had intelligence from Yemen before Christmas that leaders of a branch of Al Qaeda there were talking about "a Nigerian" being prepared for a terrorist attack, the New York Times reported Tuesday. A senior official told the Times that President Obama was told in a private meeting Tuesday while vacationing in Hawaii that the government had a variety of information in its possession before the failed bombing on a Detroit-bound flight last week that would have been a clear warning sign had it been shared among intelligence agencies. The newspaper said the information did not include the...

HONOLULU, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- U.S. officials had intelligence the suspect in the Christmas attack on Flight 253 was planning an attack but the information was fragmented, an official said. Speaking with reporters in Honolulu, where President Barack Obama is vacationing with his family, the official said it was not evident in the days before the attack that several items of intelligence information were connected but "it is now clear to us that there are bits and pieces of information that were in the possession of the U.S. government in advance of the Christmas Day attack … that had they...

The CIA was tracking a person of interest known as "The Nigerian" - who was in fact airline bomb suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab - as early as August, CBS News reports. The connection between "The Nigerian" and Abdulmutallab was not made when the 23-year-old's father contacted the U.S. embassy in Nigeria in November to warn them of his son's radicalization. CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said the intelligence agency did not have Abdulmutallab's name until November.

The Dutch military police are investigating reports that an accomplice may have helped Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab board Northwest Flight 253 in Amsterdam on Christmas day without a passport. Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to blow up the Detroit-bound plane with an explosive chemical called “PETN” he smuggled through security. He was charged on Saturday with trying to destroy an airplane, punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Meanwhile, a Michigan man who was aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 says he witnessed Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab trying to board the plane in Amsterdam without a passport. But Dutch...

Luck was with us on Northwest flight 253. Dumb luck.This terror attack could easily have been averted but for the Aloha, baby! attitude of the Obumblers regarding domestic terrorism. At Fort Hood last month, a couple of cops finally brought down an Islamofascist killer after he murdered twelve soldiers and left thirty wounded on the tarmac. On Flight 253 to Detroit it happened to be an alert Dutch filmmaker who jumped the would-be bomber when his pants started to burn. But the bomb was an ingredient of Semtex, and he was trying to inject a liquid detonator that could have...

Bleeding Hearts and Jihadi Revolving Doors Michelle Malkin Wednesday, December 30, 2009 Sen. Joe Lieberman was right to sound the alarm about Yemen in the wake of the Undy-Bomber's Christmas Day terror attack over American skies. But he was wrong to call it "tomorrow's war." The Yemen-based jihadist network has been at war with us for years -- since before the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, since before Sept. 11 and well before our current commander in chief had begun his vaunted work as a community organizer. The bleeding-heart ostriches of the left are blaming (who else?) cowboy George W. Bush...

The father of terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab met with the Central Intelligence Agency at the U.S. embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, and told of his son's likely radicalization, according to the CIA. The initial meeting Nov. 19 led to a broader gathering of multiple U.S. agencies the next day, including representatives of the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department and the CIA, in which the information was shared, a U.S. official said.

Keying off an article in the UK Times Online about Northwest Airlines flight 253 bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab organizing an antiwar seminar called "War on Terror Week", I did some quick research before the links get scrubbed.From the Times:According to isocnews.com, an online magazine for Muslim students, War on Terror Week at University College London was one of the events of the year in 2007. There was a slick video advertisement for the event, an eye-catching poster and packed lecture theatres for five days of discussions about Guantánamo Bay, allegations of torture and the subject of “Jihad v Terrorism”. The...