Al Qaeda

WASHINGTON - A senior Pentagon official told a Senate committee Thursday that the U.S. would be at war with Al Qaeda for 15 to 20 more years and said the military could target terrorists anywhere under a law passed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Michael Sheehan, assistant secretary of Defense in charge of special operations, said America's battle with terrorist groups spanned the globe "from Boston to the FATA," meaning Pakistan's tribal areas. He did not explain why he believes the effort could last another generation.

WASHINGTON -- The unauthorized disclosure of a counter-terrorism operation in Yemen last year compromised an exceedingly rare and valuable espionage achievement: an informant who had earned the trust of hardened terrorists, according to U.S. officials. His information was said to have led to the U.S. drone strike that killed a senior Al Qaeda leader, Fahd Mohammed Ahmed Quso, on May 6, 2012. U.S. officials say Quso had helped direct the terrorist attack on the Cole, a U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer, in a Yemeni harbor in October 2000.

WASHINGTON - Disclosure of a highly classified intelligence operation in Yemen last year compromised an exceedingly rare and valuable espionage achievement: an informant who had earned the trust of hardened terrorists, according to U.S. officials. The operation received new scrutiny this week after the Justice Department disclosed it had obtained telephone records for calls to and from more than 20 lines belonging to the Associated Press news service and its journalists in April and May 2012 in a high-level investigation of the alleged leak of classified information.

The furor over the Benghazi talking points continues. Republicans still see them as the main event in a campaign to embarrass President Obama. The president, for his part, calls them a "sideshow. " Finally, on Wednesday, the White House released more than 100 pages of internal emails that showed, in excruciating detail, exactly how the talking points were edited - and the emails, at least to our reading, supported the president's characterization. Prepared by intelligence officials and revised in interagency discussions, the now-famous talking points were the basis for U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's comments five days after the 2012 attack on the diplomatic compound in Libya that the siege had grown out of a spontaneous reaction to protests in Cairo over an anti-Muslim video.

Those sultans of style at Al Qaeda have released their line of lingerie for spring and it's a blast. Tucked away in their secret atelier in Yemen, the fanatics of fashion have come up with an updated version of the exploding underwear that caused such a stir on Christmas Day 2009 when a hapless African lad tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit and only managed to severely singe his private parts. Al Qaeda bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan Asiri is reputed to be the designer of the new nasty knickers.

WASHINGTON - Authorities with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the CIA, decided to remove the terms "attack," "Al Qaeda" and "terrorism" from unclassified guidance provided to the Obama administration several days after militants attacked the U.S. mission in Benghazi, a senior official said Tuesday. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, relied on the so-called talking points when she appeared on several Sunday TV talk shows five days after the Sept.

President Obama: Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, and a terrorist who's responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children. It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history. The images of Sept. 11 are seared into our national memory — hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky; the twin towers collapsing to the ground; black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon; the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa., where the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction.

Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist? To even raise the question amid all the officially inspired hysteria is heretical, especially in the context of the U.S. media's supine acceptance of administration claims relating to national security.

An intense, six-month campaign of Predator strikes in Pakistan has taken such a toll on Al Qaeda that militants have begun turning violently on one another out of confusion and distrust, U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials say.

WASHINGTON - In a newly revealed memo, the Obama administration claims authority to target and kill overseas Al Qaeda members, even American citizens, in broad terms that go beyond previous statements by the president and his top aides. The administration's position has brought objections from some longtime critics. However, the response from Congress has been muted, reflecting the degree to which once-controversial practices in drone warfare have become mainstream after more than a decade of conflict.

WASHINGTON - Disclosure of a highly classified intelligence operation in Yemen last year compromised an exceedingly rare and valuable espionage achievement: an informant who had earned the trust of hardened terrorists, according to U.S. officials. The operation received new scrutiny this week after the Justice Department disclosed it had obtained telephone records for calls to and from more than 20 lines belonging to the Associated Press news service and its journalists in April and May 2012 in a high-level investigation of the alleged leak of classified information.

WASHINGTON - A senior Pentagon official told a Senate committee Thursday that the U.S. would be at war with Al Qaeda for 15 to 20 more years and said the military could target terrorists anywhere under a law passed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Michael Sheehan, assistant secretary of Defense in charge of special operations, said America's battle with terrorist groups spanned the globe "from Boston to the FATA," meaning Pakistan's tribal areas. He did not explain why he believes the effort could last another generation.

The use of unmanned aircraft to kill suspected terrorists, a practice that has dramatically escalated during the Obama administration, is receiving fresh and welcome scrutiny in Congress and elsewhere even as the number of drone strikes seems to be on the decline. Last week, Rep. William M. "Mac" Thornberry (R-Texas), the chairman of a House armed services subcommittee, introduced legislation to require the Pentagon to promptly inform Congress about every drone strike outside Afghanistan as well as about operations to kill or capture terrorists away from declared war zones.

The Tsarnaev brothers were armed with at least three firearms and several improvised bombs - including a pressure-cooker explosive - during confrontations with police, an arsenal that will be traced to determine whether someone outside the U.S. helped the Boston bombing suspects obtain and build the weaponry, a law enforcement official said Saturday. Meanwhile, some investigators said the Boston Marathon bombing did not appear to have been orchestrated by Al Qaeda, several U.S. officials said Saturday.

BEIRUT - Syrian President Bashar Assad warned in a television interview Wednesday that the war against his government risked spreading to neighboring Jordan and predicted that rebel fighters, whom he described as Islamic extremists, would later take their violence to the West. Speaking on the pro-government Syrian channel Al Ikhbariya, Assad presented himself as a staunch patriot who was fending off meddling by the West. He appeared to be wooing Syrians wearied by the country's bloodshed, disillusioned by all sides and desperate for Syria's conflict to end. Assad charged that the United States and Europe were supporting his Islamist opponents.

WASHINGTON - It was the kind of event that had long been predicted - even considered inevitable. But the explosions Monday in Boston, which appeared to be the first successful terrorist strike against a U.S. city since Sept. 11, struck at the nation's sense of safety in public places and sparked a search for answers. "In some ways, this ruptures the psyche," said Juan Carlos Zarate, deputy national security advisor in the George W. Bush administration who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"Frontline" checks in tonight with a gloomy assessment of the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and an equally pessimistic view of whether the U.S. can prod/seduce/jawbone/bribe the Pakistani government into truly confronting Al Qaeda forces in its border region. In political terms, the title says it all: "Obama's War." President Obama has called Afghanistan "a necessary war" compared with the war in Iraq, which he opposed and vows to end. The rhetoric helped squelch Hillary Rodham Clinton -- an early supporter of the Iraq war -- in the Democratic primaries and defeat the hawkish John McCain in the general election.

Re "Al Qaeda is rebuilding amid instability in Iraq," Oct. 10 It is no mystery what happens when treatment is abandoned before cancer is completely cured. It doesn't bargain; it has no conscience; it can't be reasoned with and will not stop until you are dead. Any resort to human morals in the matter will prove a deadly misplacement of priorities and evidence a fundamental lack of understanding the enemy. Unless you carve it from your body or drive it from existence by whatever means available, you're doomed to early expiration.

WASHINGTON - Skilled in tracking foreign terrorists, Jarret Brachman once was a sought-after expert on Al Qaeda, advising several federal agencies and speaking regularly around the country. Now the former research director of the Combating Terrorism Center, a think tank at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, has turned his focus away from Islamic militants. He spends most of his time consulting with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies about threats from domestic extremists and antigovernment militias.

BEIRUT - The leader of Al Nusra Front, militant Islamist fighters whose role in the Syria uprising has raised concerns in Washington, acknowledged Wednesday for the first time his group's affiliation with Al Qaeda and the extremist movement's Iraq affiliate. In a seven-minute audio message posted online, Abu Mohammed Jolani pledged Al Nusra Front's loyalty to Al Qaeda chief Ayman Zawahiri and acknowledged its ties to the Islamic State of Iraq, or ISI. However, the Syrian militant expressed surprise at a statement by ISI late Monday of a merger between the the front and ISI. He said the leadership of Al Nusra Front, or Jabhat al Nusra, “had no prior knowledge of this [announcement]