Kristol, Fox Nation suggested that closing U.S. embassy in Yemen is “a sign of weakness”

Kristol: “That's a victory for Al Qaeda.” On the January 3 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, Kristol, who is a Weekly Standard editor and a Fox News contributor, stated: “Closing the embassy in Yemen last night -- I mean, I don't -- you know, no one wants State Department officials being put at risk and all that, but that is a sign of weakness. Closing the embassy? We can't protect our own embassy in Yemen, a place we have special operations forces. A place we say we're working with the government on the front lines of the war on terror? And there's a terror threat, and we close the embassy? That's a victory for Al Qaeda. This last week has been a victory for Al Qaeda in that region, I'm afraid.”

Fox Nation: “Is Closing the U.S. Embassy in Yemen a Sign of Weakness?” On January 4, the Fox Nation suggested that closing the U.S. embassy in Yemen was a sign of weakness, linking to a January 3 Associated Press article on the embassy closing using the following graphic:

U.S. embassy in Yemen was also closed during Bush administration

The Washington Post reported that U.S. consular office in Yemen was closed in 2002. In a January 23, 2002, article (accessed via the Nexis database), The Washington Post's Walter Pincus wrote:

A senior al Qaeda leader held by U.S. forces in Afghanistan provided information about an alleged plot to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Yemen with a truck bomb, leading to last week's decisions to close the embassy consular office and tighten security around the facility, Bush administration officials said yesterday.

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Officials said that although they were not certain about the information's accuracy, U.S. authorities took it seriously enough to issue a “credible threat” warning and order the consular office closed. The Yemeni government also has increased police security around the embassy, officials said.

Other nations' embassies in Yemen also closed

AP: “US, UK close Yemen embassies over al-Qaida threats.” While the Fox Nation's headline mentioned only the United States, the AP article to which it linked reported that "[s]ecurity reasons led Britain to act, too," in closing its embassy in Yemen.

Fox Nation ignored additional embassies' closures on Monday. The New York Times reported on January 4 that the U.S. and U.K. embassies “remained closed on Monday for a second day, and the French, German and Japanese embassies largely or entirely closed their embassies to the public.”