Al Qaeda collapse – not!
Administration officials are trying to convince the public that killing of Osama bin Laden and the toll of seven years of CIA drone strikes have pushed Al Qaeda to the brink of collapse. The new Director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, and the top U.S. national security officials now suggest a potential finish line in the fight against Al Qaeda, since bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in the raid in Pakistan.
However, the recently departed director of the national counterterrorism center said last Thursday that Al Qaeda in Pakistan still posed a serious threat to the United States, and he warned that the comments by the Administration were, well, off base.,
Michael E. Leiter, who resigned three weeks ago as head of the National Counterterrorism Center, is the most significant opposition to a growing number of statements that the death of Osama bin Laden and years of Central Intelligence Agency drone strikes in Pakistan have brought the United States within reach of defeating Al Qaeda.
This is wishful thing if not political posturing for the next presidential election when they fail to mention the franchises of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, Al Qaeda in Somalia and Al Qaeda in Iran.
Mr. Leiter also raised concerns that a decade of intensive paramilitary operations by the Central Intelligence Agency in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen had begun to change the nature of the spy service, and not
necessarily all for the better. He spoke in an interview at the Aspen Security Forum at the Aspen Institute. The New York Times is a sponsor of the conference, and Mr. Leiter was interviewed by David E. Sanger, The Times¹s chief Washington correspondent.
The only way of ending the threat that Al Qaeda and all of its affiliates pose to the United States and its interests around the world is to kill all the leaders, remove all safe havens and confiscate all bank accounts.
That is not going to happen any time soon.