AndrewC
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U.S. Analyst Depicts Al Qaeda as Secure in Pakistan and More Potent Than Last Year
If the greatest threat to America is AQ and a 9/11 style attack. Why haven't we done more to stop AQ? Wrap up Iraq, quit fighting Afghans that only care about attacking Afghanistan and focus on the threat to American soil. The taliban and pakistan can't stop us from operating within their borders. We don't need to occupy. We need to clean house and leave. Quick and as clean as possible.
Al Qaeda’s success in forging close ties to Pakistani militant groups has given it an increasingly secure haven in the mountainous tribal areas of Pakistan, the American government’s senior terrorism analyst said Tuesday.
Al Qaeda is more capable of attacking inside the United States than it was last year, and its cadre of senior leaders has recruited and trained “dozens” of militants capable of blending into Western society to carry out attacks, the analyst said.
The remarks Tuesday by the intelligence analyst, Ted Gistaro, were the most comprehensive assessment of the Qaeda threat by an American official since the National Intelligence Estimate issued last summer, which concluded that Al Qaeda had largely rebuilt its haven in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
A year later, Mr. Gistaro said, the problem has only grown worse, in part because of a symbiotic relationship between Qaeda operatives and Pakistani militant groups based in the tribal areas.
“It is a stronger, more comfortable safe haven than it was for them a year ago,” said Mr. Gistaro, who supervises all intelligence reports on terrorism at the National Intelligence Council. He made his remarks in a speech here to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Al Qaeda’s growing strength inside Pakistan has in recent months prompted new discussions in the Bush administration about using special-operations troops for raids in the tribal areas — an option the White House has long resisted because of the risks.
There is also a growing recognition among senior officials that the Bush administration for years did not take the Qaeda threat in Pakistan seriously enough and relied on President Pervez Musharraf to dismantle networks of militants there.
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American military and intelligence officials believe that Pakistani militant networks are engaged in an increasingly violent campaign inside Afghanistan, attacking American and coalition troops as well as civilian targets like the Indian Embassy in Kabul, which a suicide bomber attacked last month.
American spy agencies have also concluded that officers in Pakistan’s powerful Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, which has long maintained ties to militants in the tribal areas, helped carry out the embassy bombing.
If the greatest threat to America is AQ and a 9/11 style attack. Why haven't we done more to stop AQ? Wrap up Iraq, quit fighting Afghans that only care about attacking Afghanistan and focus on the threat to American soil. The taliban and pakistan can't stop us from operating within their borders. We don't need to occupy. We need to clean house and leave. Quick and as clean as possible.