Politics

Morning Vid: Will Calls Foiled Terrorists 'Staggeringly Incompetent"

The Christmas Bomber and Times Square suspect are 'minor league figures'

By Jake Simpson
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The shoddy execution of the failed Christmas Day bombing and Times Square car bomb have caused pundits to call the attempted perpetrators, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and Faisal Shahzad, incompetent. In succinct agreement with this view is Washington Post columnist George Will, who bluntly discredited the quality of the pair of failed attacks on ABC's "This Week."

Noting reports that Shahzad was in league with the Pakistani Taliban, Will posited that the connection suggests "the decline of the tradecraft of terrorism over time." He added: "The underwear bomber at Christmas and this man, also, are staggeringly incompetent and minor league figures compared to the amazing precision and scale of the 9/11 attacks."

Will gave some credit to the Bush and Obama administrations for destabilizing terrorist networks with their consistent drone strikes, which have left extremists "footloose and having trouble coordinating."

(Hat tip: Mediaite)


This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.