Dick Cheney and Osama bin Laden are as one. The former US vice-president and the al-Qaeda leader agree that Barack Obama was too soft on the underpants bomber.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, charged with trying to blow up an airliner on Christmas day, should be in Guantánamo. There, hooded and shackled, he could have been subjected to what Mr Cheney likes to call “enhanced interrogation techniques”; torture in English.
That would have shown that the US is still serious about fighting the “war on terrorism”. Instead, Mr Abdulmutallab was read his legal rights and brought before a US court. Inexplicably, the Nigerian was afforded the same due process as an American would-be terrorist.