The New York Times’ big splash today on the hunt for Osama bin Laden is well worth reading in full as it deals with the more important question of what Al Qaeda is capable of now. Here are the two key paragraphs on this point:
Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terrorist camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago. … “The United States faces a threat from Al Qaeda today that is comparable to what it faced on Sept. 11, 2001,” said Seth Jones, a Pentagon consultant and a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation. “The base of operations has moved only a short distance, roughly the difference from New York to Philadelphia.”
How to deal with this Pakistan problem is the foreign policy question that is discussed most vigorously in off the record meetings. There is no easy answer but allowing Al Qaeda a safe haven from which to plan attacks is clearly not an acceptable answer.
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