Bob Kerrey, Not As Big A Hippie As We Thought

Former Senator, Governor, and 9/11 Commission member Bob Kerrey was fired up this morning, so much so that Imus suggested he become a current something other than President of the New School. But the loyal Kerrey is one with the hippies.

Though his position on how the United States government should be handling Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried and failed to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas day, was decidedly un-hippie-like.

"I think he should have been turned over to the military authorities to try to find out what else he knew," said Kerrey, knowing full well what sort of interrogation techniques the military would apply.

Abdulmutallab, he added, is not just "some guy who tried to blow up a plane." He is, rather, "a guy who's hooked up with a jihadi movement that has declared war on the United States of America."

Specifically, he's linked to the same radical imam, Anwar al-Awlaki, with whom Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had corresponded prior to killing 12 people at Ft. Hood back in November.

"It's very disturbing to me that neither the Congress nor the administration tracked down this Awlaki guy and attempted to find out who he's trying to influence in the United States," said Kerrey, noting that Awlaki is American-born.

As for who exactly dropped the ball, Kerrey was unwilling to pinpoint specific people, and instead blamed Congress for not reforming itself.

"The oversight committees on intelligence are very, very weak, and I think insufficiently prepared to do the job they need to do," he said. "Not just to oversee what the administration is doing, but to make sure they've got a partner when mistakes are made, and to correct mistakes when they're made."

Kerrey was most exasperated that warnings from Abdulmutallab's own father, a prominent Nigerian banker, about his son's radicalization did not result in, at the very least, a revoked visa.

"After tens of billions of dollars have been spent," said Kerrey. "It's the same sort of silly mistakes that were made that cause 9/11 to happen."

The administration, Kerrey insisted, must take this incident very seriously. "They got lucky, in a way, that this guy couldn't set off his underpants," he said. "But he could have brought down that plane and killed everybody on it."

Besides, he added, "If you can't stop a guy like that from getting on a plane, my god, what kind of an organization are you running?"

-Julie Kanfer