Al-Qaida’s Threat Is Still With Us
January 21, 2009Al-Qaida’s Threat Is Still With Us
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | 21 January 2009
War On Terror: President Obama steps into office with awesome responsibilities, not least of which is protecting the U.S. from its enemies, foreign and domestic. From Algeria, we get a reminder of how tough that job is.
Read More: Global War On Terror | Election 2008
For those who think the global war on terror is just a bad memory from the Bush administration, you might be surprised to discover it isn’t. The threat is real — even more so, given that so many people are convinced it no longer exists.
An overlooked news item out of Algeria puts to rest that notion. The report says that an al-Qaida affiliate there abruptly closed a mountain training base after an experiment with biological weapons went wrong.
A U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition he not be named, confirmed the accident that led to a shutdown of the training facility in Tizi Ouzou, a province in eastern Algeria.
He said the U.S. intercepted desperate communications between the group and al-Qaida leaders in Pakistan’s tribal region earlier this month suggesting that the camp had been quickly abandoned.
A report by the Sun, a British tabloid, said at least 40 operatives belonging to al-Qaida in the Land of the Maghreb (AQLIM), an al-Qaida affiliate in North Africa, were killed in a training accident.
From the sound of it, they were likely killed by a strain of the bubonic plague — the deadly rat-borne bacterial disease that ravaged much of the world in the 13th and 14th century, wiping out fully a third of Europe’s population. An airborne version, pneumonic plague, is equally deadly.
The details are horrific. The Algerian victims were said to be afflicted with horrible boils in different parts of their bodies, dying in excruciating pain after just a few hours. It’s an awful way to die.
Since AQLIM boasts of 1,000 members in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Nigeria, the loss of 40 terrorists will barely scratch the surface of their membership.
What worries us is that if the “accident” was part of a wider program to create a deadly bioweapon to be used against civilians — possibly in the U.S. or Europe — then we are in serious danger.
For seven years now, Americans have been safe. After 9/11, former President Bush rocked the terrorists on their heels by pursuing them wherever they were.
Osama bin Laden has been reduced to wheezing out badly recorded threats to the U.S. from his hideout in Pakistan’s badlands, possibly a cave. Other al-Qaida terrorist affiliates have scattered across the region, living in fear of being given up for a reward.
The U.S. military, at Bush’s behest, has put relentless and merciless pressure on the terrorists. U.S. killer drones prowl the skies over terrorist safe havens, looking for targets and, with Hellfire missiles, often finding them.
At least six senior al-Qaida leaders have been killed in just the last six months. As the indispensable Web site Stratfor has noted, Pakistan has become “the al-Qaida version of hell.”
This explains in large part why we haven’t suffered a second hor-rific terrorist strike since 9/11. But the accident in Algeria likewise suggests that we can never let down our guard.
A bioweapon loosed on a major population center is a terrifying prospect. The last plague outbreak in London in 1665 killed more than 30,000 people in a city much smaller than the one today.
Al-Qaida doesn’t lack the will to do this, just the means.
Developing a biological or chemical weapon is “something that al-Qaida still aspires to do,” a former National Security Council counterterrorism expert, Roger Cressey, told the Washington Times.
President Obama, to his credit, has vowed to support sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to help win the war against the Taliban on the ground and continue to defeat al-Qaida. But will he continue to fight the broader war against terrorism?~~~
We hope so. If his inaugural address is any indication, he just might. Obama pointedly noted that “our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred” — a clear reference to al-Qaida and the threat it still poses.
While campaigning, Obama called for all troops to be pulled from Iraq by the end of 2008, and for Guantanamo to be shut immediately. Since winning the presidency, he’s backtracked on both pledges.
That shows flexibility and wisdom. He’ll need both, since the U.S. faces a terrorist threat that will take advantage of our inattention or our weakness to kill as many of us as possible, without remorse.
