So says former CIA officer Marc Sageman in his new book, Leaderless Jihad.
The WaPo's David Ignatius seems to agree.
Quote:
|
"The heart of Sageman's message is that we have been scaring ourselves into exaggerating the terrorism threat -- and then by our unwise actions in Iraq making the problem worse. He attacks head-on the central thesis of the Bush administration, echoed increasingly by Republican presidential candidate John McCain, that, as McCain's Web site puts it, the United States is facing "a dangerous, relentless enemy in the War against Islamic Extremists" spawned by al-Qaeda (The Fading Jihadists.)"
|
Sageman says the first two waves of terrorists have been largely decimated. Those remaining -- 100 or so along the Pakistani frontier
Quote:
|
-- "are genuinely dangerous. . . and they must be captured or killed. But they do not pose an existential threat to America, much less a 'clash of civilizations'."
|
I've thought for a long while now that al-Qaeda in Iraq constitute less than 1000 fighters.
Sageman thinks there are far less than that.
He says the membership of AQI has dwindled to a paltry two dozen people, and its leadership is completely cut off from the mostly "petty criminals and gang members" that are now the target of the war on terror.
Quote:
|
"Dr Sageman said al-Qaeda's leaders had been all but cut off from the current crop of jihadists and comprised no more than two dozen people. The threat was now coming from home-grown young men in their early 20s who recruited mostly on the internet," reports news.com.au.
|
The most persuasive estimate I've heard comes from Malcolm Nance, the author of The Terrorists of Iraq and a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq (AQI). He believes AQI includes about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq," according to Nance, "is a microscopic terrorist organization."
I think it is like using a mallet to get rid of a ball of mercury; you now have 20 new balls of mercury, and will never catch them with the mallet approach. It is utter futility.
Bu$h is riding the gravy train that is the Phoney War On Terror, and become a brilliant "war time leader," instead of the confused bumbler that he is.
The "Terrarist" war that will last for generations is a fiction of the Bu$h White House.