Bill Kristol Upset That Attempted Air Plane Bomber Is 'Lawyered Up'

By Heather — December 28, 2009

In typical fashion, Bill Kristol is upset that the attempted air plane bomber is 'lawyered up'. I guess he thinks law enforcement would have a better case against him if they just hurried up and tortured the guy. That'll help get him convicted Bill! Idiot.

WALLACE: Well, obviously, we were just plain lucky that this guy's device, explosive device, didn't work.

But, Bill Kristol, what does the Christmas Day terror attack tell you about the continued efforts of our enemies to try to strike the U.S. homeland?

KRISTOL: Well, they are our enemies, and we have to understand that it's a war. And what most worries me -- what most worries me about the reaction to the attack is we're still treating it as a law enforcement matter. The FBI is investigating. He's been arrested. He's been read his rights. In the Washington Post late yesterday afternoon, after the news was already coming out about the Yemen connections and stuff, a law enforcement authority was quoted as saying authorities are operating on the theory that he acted alone.

We so desperately want not to believe that we have to deal with this as a global threat from Al Qaida and that we need to act against the key nexuses of Al Qaida, such as in Yemen, that we hope these guys are just acting alone. But he wasn't acting alone.

[...]

WALLACE: You know, it's interesting, Juan, because it does come out today -- we find out that he had a visa because he was a student in London. I guess the visa had lapsed.

He applied for a new visa in May because he said he was going to take a course. Somebody there checked out and said, "You know what? That course that you're talking about doesn't exist. It's a bogus course." They didn't give him a new visa. And somehow one wonders if that should have been in his file.

WILLIAMS: Well, I think it was in his file. It's how we know it. But I think that the big issue...

WALLACE: Well, I think they know it from the British authorities now.

WILLIAMS: Right, but I think that one of the -- the big issue here is that he went on this list in November, the same time that his father went to the U.S. embassy in Nigeria.

So the question is then at some point should he have been advanced to at least the no-screening list, which is about 14,000 people. And you know what? We don't know. It looks like they're going to ramp up a lot of this now. Sort of the horse is out of the barn, or however you say that phrase, to try to go after people at this level.

But to me, it doesn't seem fair to start, you know, all these political recriminations. Jennifer says the White House is very aware that that kind of criticism is coming. But it seems to me at this point it's a bunch of finger-pointing and a bunch of politics in Washington.

The real thing is we have hardened America as a target. And despite that, what we're seeing is an increase in these so-called -- and here I disagree with Bill Kristol -- lone wolves, people who are...

INGRAHAM: We don't know yet.

WILLIAMS: ... as a result of...

WALLACE: We don't know -- we don't know that.

WILLIAMS: No, I think we do know that.

WALLACE: How do we know that?

INGRAHAM: No, we don't.

WILLIAMS: I think what we know is...

WALLACE: We don't know if he was in Yemen or not. Where did he get...

WILLIAMS: No.

WALLACE: ... the PETN?

WILLIAMS: Clearly -- look.

WALLACE: We don't know any of that.

WILLIAMS: I think what we know at this point -- all that we know is that this guy had not spent any large amount of time with Al Qaida. He may have visited Yemen at...

INGRAHAM: We don't know that.

WILLIAMS: ... one point. That's about it. And he may have been given the PETN and a small amount...

INGRAHAM: Well...

KRISTOL: That's enough time to possibly...

WILLIAMS: OK.

KRISTOL: ... kill -- this is the problem. This is precisely the problem. This guy has been lawyered up. We don't know anything. One reason we don't know anything -- he's not being treated like an enemy combatant. He's not being interrogated. We're not finding out everything we could know about Awlaki.

This is an ongoing attack -- enemy attempt to attack the United States, and we're treating it as a one-off law enforcement case.