(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This was a serious reminder of the dangers that we face and the nature of those who threaten our homeland. Had the suspect succeeded in bringing down that plane, it could have killed nearly 300 passengers and crew.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANGLE: There is President Obama with his first comments on the matter today.

Let's bring in our panel, Steve Hayes, senior writer for The Weekly Standard, A.B. Stoddard, associate editor of The Hill, and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer.

So the president comes out today, he says that, and he also says we're going to hold them accountable, them being whoever is responsible for this.

But the alleged terrorist is being handled as a criminal suspect rather than a captured terrorist. To what extent does that determine what we're able to learn from this, gentlemen, about what future attacks might be planned and how this one was actually planned itself?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: It means we will learn be absolutely nothing. The minute he gets a lawyer and his Miranda rights, it's over.

The question people have to ask themselves is this guy, who tries to blow up an American airplane, who is an Nigerian, who is not an American, is captured, does he have the right to remain silent or do we have the right to interrogate him in order to find out who sent him, who equipped him, who armed him, and who trained him?

It is a question of whether we're serious about this as a war or whether it's a mere, as Bush - as President Obama said, isolated extremist. He is not an isolated extremist. Obviously he is connected to Al Qaeda. Obviously he was in Yemen. Obviously there is information he has.

And the question is, are we going to treat him the way that we're treating Khalid Sheik Mohammed with a trial and in this case a right to tell us nothing, or what FDR did when the German saboteurs were captured in the United States and he ordered a secret military trial and they were executed. They had no rights.

I mean, this confusion which starts at the top with the Obama administration - remember, he declared at the beginning of his administration that there's no War on Terror. They won't use the term. Well, he may have called off the War on Terror, but Al Qaeda has not.

ANGLE: A.B., what do you think on this point?

STODDARD: Well, I was surprised today that the president made such measured remarks considering his administration had to walk back their comments about how the system had worked.

And that was - the coordinated message both from Robert Gibbs, White House spokesman, as well as Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano about how this is going to work. And of course she had to backtrack and say...

ANGLE: While we're talking about this, let's hear what she said. You are saying that she and Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary, had essentially the same message. We're going to hear what she said on Sunday and then what she said this morning. So let's listen, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NAPOLITANO: The system has worked really very, very smoothly over the course of the past several days.

No secretary of homeland security would sit here and say that a system worked prior to this incident that allowed this individual to get on this plane.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANGLE: So yesterday the system works fine, today the system did not work fine. That's what you're talking about?

STODDARD: I think the official initial response when we did not hear from President Obama, from his administration was laughable. It was a huge error. The fact that they made those statements and had to walk them back today was a huge mistake, and they knew that.

That's why I'm surprised that when President Obama did go to cameras, he wasn't more emphatic about this incident, and all he called for was a thorough investigation. He called it an isolated incident.

I think that he is - I think that he is taking a very measured -- it is classic Obama style. He is taking a measured response, that the American people think his response that this is the first time that Democrats have governed in the age of terrorism post-9/11, this is their test. And they will fail it if the public believes his response is inadequate or insufficient.

ANGLE: And there is one other - Steve, before I get to you, there is one other thing I want to listen to, something that President Obama said today that Charles alluded to. Let's just listen to one other comment he made today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: This incident, like several that have preceded it, demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANGLE: "An isolated extremist." Do we know that this was an isolated extremist?

STEVE HAYES, SENIOR WRITER, THE WEEKLY STANDARD: He is the president so I will be respectful and say that was stunningly foolish for him to say that.

There is ample evidence and growing evidence that this was anything but an isolated extremist, that alarm bells were going off all over the place, whether it was his father notifying the U.S. embassy in Lagos, whether it was the British authorities notifying that he was put on their watch list.

What I think this indicates is that the president wishes this were an isolated extremist. It's not an isolated extremist, and it looks increasingly as if he were part of the Al Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula, which has as its leaders two former Guantanamo Bay prisoners that.

That is the reason the president is downplaying this. It complicates everything he wants to do with Guantanamo Bay, it complicates everything he wants to do on national security.

And the problem here is that this is the all ultimate law enforcement mentality. He wants to believe - he has sent a message to the bureaucracy that these folks, whether it is detainees or suspected terrorists, are innocent until proven guilty.

And it is precisely the opposite of the way President Bush handled these matters, where he assumed people are bad and did not give them to the benefit of the doubt. The president is doing this. He also said that this person allegedly tried to detonate a bomb. His entire announcement was based on the premise that that's in fact what this person did. He sounded like a defense lawyer.

ANGLE: The frame of mind seems to have started early on, Charles, when you had Janet Napolitano, who rather than use the word "terrorism" used the phrase "man-caused disasters."

And remember, her department issued a report early in the year in which she warned of the threat of the returning American soldiers who might not fit back in society and who might join right-wing extremists engaging terror or isolated lone wolf incidents against the United States. Is that the threat that America is facing?

And we get Obama today in which he says that this incident in Detroit was a serious reminder of the nature of those who threaten us. And yet he denies the nature of those who threaten us. He calls them violent extremists. A guy who shoots an abortion doctor is a violent extremist.

The nature of the threat that we are facing is jihadism, young Muslim males dedicated to a religious ideology and cult who go around the world blowing up trains and planes and killing innocents, that's the threat. It is a word he dare not use.

And unless he does admit that, you get the whole misdirection of the Department of Homeland Security and of all of our efforts. These people are illegal enemy combatants and have to be treated as such and not as a criminal who gets his Miranda rights.