This is a rush transcript of "Special Report With Bret Baier" from December 29, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The reviews I've ordered will surely tell us — that what already is apparent is that there was a mix of human and systemic failures that contributed to this potentially catastrophic breach of security.

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CHRIS WALLACE, GUEST HOST: Well, that was President Obama late this afternoon addressing the attempted Christmas day terror attack for the second time in as many days.

Let's bring in the panel: Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard; A.B. Stoddard of The Hill and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer.

The president tried again today to get out ahead of the outrage over the lapses that led or contributed to this man getting on this plane and attempting to set off a bomb.

Charles, how did he do, the president do this time?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, this was an exercise in image repair. The president pretended that there was — the reason he came out a day after his first address was because there was new information, and he cited the fact that the Nigerian attacker's father had appeared at the embassy. Of course that was known already earlier in the weekend.

And secondly he said that whereas the information had left the U.S. embassy in Nigeria and arrived in Washington, it hadn't been properly shared, but everybody knew that as well.

WALLACE: So why did he come out?

KRAUTHAMMER: Because there's outrage here at the incompetence of this administration, the fact that his secretary of homeland security, who's clearly over her head, had gone out on Sunday and pretended the system had succeeded and then had to walk it back.

And then when the president came out himself after waiting three days, he appeared detached and cool and he spoke about this as a criminal act — speaking about a suspect, alleged attempt, about it as an isolated extremist. In fact, we already knew about the connection in Yemen.

This is an attempt by the administration, by the president himself, over and over again, to disconnect these kinds of attacks from the War on Terror, which of course he declared over at his inauguration and which, unfortunately, Al Qaeda has not.

And as a result of that, you know, people ought to ask him, do you still believe he is an isolated extremist? People ought to ask him — and today he repeated the word "extremist" over and over again. What kind of extremist is he? Is he a jihadist"

And lastly people ought to ask him, are you still intent on releasing the 80 Yemenis in Guantanamo? Lieberman said Iraq was the war of yesterday, Afghanistan the war of today, and Yemen the war of tomorrow. It will be a lot easier to handle these 80 Yemenis in Guantanamo than in the wilds of Yemen, which is where they're going to end up if released and plan more attacks on the United States.

WALLACE: I'm just getting a report, A.B., as we're talking, and, Doug, where does it come from? Who's reporting it? Fox can confirm that the CIA had apparently been tracking this fellow, Abdulmutallab, since August. And so it seems that the lapse, the failure to connect the dots, if you will, really is more egregious than we even knew about.

A.B. STODDARD, THE HILL: This is amazing. I agree with Charles that the president came out to try to get ahead of the outrage, because he acknowledged no outrage yesterday.

This is just a staggering story, the fact that this man — what we know, there will be a next time and we won't be lucky enough to have a warning from someone's father, and why this man was able to stay on this broad list and never make it to a selectee list where he would require more screening or a no-fly list, now to learn the CIA has been tracking him and that we don't — we still have him on a plane, possibly without passport but definitely one-way, no luggage, in cash, all the warning signals ignored, is just so incredible.

And the president has to acknowledge that everyone is asking these questions. Everybody knows this was a systemic failure.