Michael B. Mukasey: What Does the Detroit Bomber Know? - WSJ.com

Michael B. Mukasey: What Does the Detroit Bomber Know? - WSJ.com: "There was much to celebrate in the providential combination of an incompetent terrorist and surpassingly brave passengers and crew who saved 288 people aboard Northwest Airlines flight 253 on Christmas Day. There is a lot less to applaud in the official reaction.

Well-deserved mockery has already been heaped on the move-along-folks-nothing-to-see-here tone of the administration's initial pronouncements—from Janet Napolitano's 'the system worked,' to President Obama's statement that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was an 'isolated extremist.' This week brought little improvement.

The president acknowledged that the plot had been hatched in Yemen, but not without adding the misleading statement that Yemen faces 'crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies.' That Yemenis have to cope with 'crushing poverty' is irrelevant here. Abdulmutallab is the son of a wealthy Nigerian banker. Other jihadists, including the physician who blew himself up and killed seven CIA agents in Afghanistan last week, and indeed the millionaire Osama bin Laden, prove that poverty does not beget terrorists. 'Deadly insurgencies' is a half-truth, which omits the fact that the Yemeni government itself has supported al Qaeda and continues to harbor at least two people—Jamal Ahmed Mohammed Ali al-Badawi and Fahad Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso—involved in the bombing of the USS Cole."