*This Washington Times article (they're big cult authorities) offers two interesting logical issues.
*If Al Qaeda is "defeating itself," wouldn't Al Qaeda have defeated themselves *much faster* if the USA had done *absolutely nothing* after 9/11?
*Also, since Ozzie has been swanning around at large and violently molesting the entire planet for decades now, isn't it possible that he's just plain getting old? He's three years younger than I am, but I don't spend every day praying, conspiring and befriending armed suicides in remote mountain hideouts.
http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20100128_5379.php
Al-Qaeda Still Dangerous But Political Power Waning, Expert Says
Thursday, Jan. 28, 2010
Counterterrorism expert Steve Coll said yesterday on Capitol Hill that the terrorist group al-Qaeda should still be considered a danger to national security, but that its political influence is on the decline, the Washington Times reported (see GSN, Jan. 26).
"In a strategic or global sense, al-Qaeda seems to be in the process of defeating itself," Coll, appearing before the House Armed Services Committee, said of the organization that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and is widely assessed to aspire to use unconventional weapons against the United States.
Al-Qaeda's influence remains greatest in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, he said.
However, "its political isolation in the Muslim world has set the stage for the United States and allied governments, with persistence, concentrated effort, and perhaps some luck, to finally destroy central al-Qaeda's leadership along the Afghan-Pakistan border," Coll said.
Killing al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, through a U.S. drone strike continues to be a top priority, according to Coll, a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine and head of the New America Foundation. Eliminating the organization's top leadership "would not only provide justice for the victims of 9/11, it would also contribute to the freedom of maneuver enjoyed by the United States in the region and globally, by drawing to an end the debilitating, destablizing narrative of hunt-and-escape that has elevated the reputations of bin Laden and al-Zawahri for so long," he said.
The terrorist organization's central function of providing funding and training for extremists has diminished over the past 10 years, Coll said.
"Today that media and ideological role remains important, but al-Qaeda's fundraising abilities are pinched," he said. "Its most practical contribution to its networked partners today may be the tactical expertise it has developed about bomb making and suicide bomb delivery" (Bill Gertz, Washington Times, Jan. 28).
