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Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab.

Some facts about the Christmas Day bomber:

1. He was an engineering student who lived in a $4 million apartment in London.

2. His father, a banker, warned American authorities about his son months ago. (How much will Obama be blamed?)

3. His bombing was interrupted by a passenger, Dutch video director Jasper Schuringa, who heard a noise and saw that "he was holding a burning object between his legs. 'I pulled the object from him and tried to extinguish the fire with my hands and threw it away.'"

4. "He was staring into nothing."

ADDED: Mutallab had a 2-year visa that was issued in 2008, and "the initial information was not specific enough to raise alarms that he could potentially carry out a terrorist attack":

?The information was passed into the system, but the expression of radical extremist views were very nonspecific,? said the senior administration official, who has been briefed on the inquiry but spoke on condition of anonymity because it is continuing. ?We were evaluating him, but the information we had was not a lot to go on.?

Satisfied with the job the administration is doing protecting us from terrorism? George Bush protected the American homeland after 9/11. Is Obama taking it seriously enough? Would Bush have kept Mutallab off that plane?

Full post as published by Althouse on December 26, 2009 (boomark / email).