President Obama said in his radio address today that "our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred." He also reported about the latest attack, on Christmas Day by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, that "an affiliate of Al Qaeda...Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, trained him, equipped him with those explosives, and directed him to attack that plane headed for America." So UFA was not just an unhappy youth radicalized and encouraged by some Internet imam. His attack on the U.S. was "directed" by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Yet UFA, it bears repeating, is not being treated by the Obama administration as an enemy combatant. He's being treated as a criminal suspect, with all the protections that implies. And while it seems UFA talked some at first--and that we got some useful information from him--he apparently soon clammed up, presumably on advice of counsel. This is someone who has current, and probably actionable, intelligence on our enemies in Yemen--and probably on enemies in Africa and London as well. So I repeat the question President Obama hasn't answered--but which should be addressed on the Sunday talk shows to John Brennan, his top counterterrorism adviser who's heading up the review the president ordered: Why are we not treating UFA as an enemy combatant? We would treat him as an enemy combatant, of course, under the interrogation rules laid down by President Obama, which are more restrictive than those used occasionally in prior years. Still, interrogating UFA as an enemy combatant could well provide more information than handling him as criminal suspect. Why risk a failure to get actionable information in the war we're fighting?