Commando

The new audio tape of Osama Bin Laden consistently refers to the option of peace talks and a truce. This has not happened before in any other announcement from Al Qaeda. The offering of a truce is caused by three things:

- Al Qaeda is lacking funding and this could have been seen as a progression after the Iraq letter was intercepted by the CIA and stated they are loosing support because of their barbaric executions and kidnappings.
-The air strikes in Pakistan this week showed the leaders the US will persist there whereabouts as long as they are alive. Hence they are under pressure and have no where to hide.
-The long term occupation by the USA of Iraq has sent a message to the leaders in we will not give up.

Hence the hunt for Osama may be old but the USA is very close to finding him and annihilating Al Qaeda for good.

leib10

I'm not so optomistic. Al-Qaeda will never agree to any truce and will fight to the death, as most fanatics do. Plus I have a feeling Al-Qaeda is far from being on its knees. But we shall not rest until the are ALL dead.

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"The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. So wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up and smell the ashes." G-Man

Bluesman

I disagree with details of BOTH of these posts.

Commando, your second point that aQ saw from the strike that we mean business is a bit off, as the tape was likely made well before the strike, probably in December. I will grant you, though, that by now, that message has likely been coming through to 'em loud and clear. We have been taking apart their hateful little clubhouse in a very regular and workmanlike way for about four years now, and their capabilities across the spectrum from finances to manpower to political heft has been waning - no, more like falling off a fekkin' cliff, man - since then.

Also, your third point would seem to work against itself. We have been at extreme pains to stress that we are NOT going to be in Iraq in perpetuity, but the other side HAS staked out a 'do or die' position there.

leibs, it's true that ObL is offering the possibility of a truce in the tape, and his asking price is that of a losing commander: 'Get off our BACKS, already, and we'll go away!' I don't think they're all done with us, but day by day, we're prying that club out of their withering hands, and that sleeper hold we've got 'em in is starting to really pinch down on that windpipe. They're still dangerous, and I think they may have one or two spectacular ops left in 'em. But they're going to need a lot more luck to pull it off like they envision it than they did on 9/11, when they could rely on us failing to be vigilant enough, and really, just too downright negligent to bust it up.

We've got our dukes up now, and if they land a punch, it'll be because they got better (not likely), or really, really lucky. And as the old general said about strategic planning, "'Hope' is not a method."

I'm optimistic. We're doing GREAT against 'em, and we've come dam' close to having emasculated them. But as you said, we've got to wipe them out. A truce is simply not acceptable.

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"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

astralis

bluesman,

seems like these days al-qaeda has (due to the diligence of US efforts) been forced to transform from a clubhouse to a banner. disparate terrorist groups are now just tacking on "al-qaeda" to their names, for street cred. that's something that won't disappear for a long time. so al-qaeda is largely no longer a viable organization, but...

best i think we can hope for is major disruption in terrorist efforts, as we don't have the manpower to uproot every single lousy terrorist in the world.

Confed999

It's a war against terrorist organizations. You can't spot random individual crazies with military action, that's police work.

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No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

Bluesman

Well said. And one other thing is absolutely clear: we can't be successful if we just play defense all the time. Obviously, we have to do the best we can on the 'defense' side, but really, the key to prevention of attacks is aggressive OFFENSIVE measures.

Our current president understands this, and acts accordingly. When we slip into the mindset that we can cover everything perfectly, or that a law enforcement strategy is viable, we will see that terrorism is just like rising water: eventually, it seeps through the sandbags, or catastrophically breaks the wall. We have to be willing to find and shut off the source of the water.

BenRoethig

I heard a very good point on a talk show about this. It's an old Arab tradition to offer your enemy a last chance of peace befor you strike.

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Swift Sword

IIRC, did not truce offers precede several of AQ's attacks in Europe and elsewhere over the last couple of years?

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Pharoh was pimp but now he is dead. What are you going to do today?

Ray

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"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA

Dreadnought

I/We can only hope to wake up one morning to find that he is caught or dead. IMO i side with the later. Just like the world woke up to find Saddam Hussein caught. It was a true blessing and gave hope that this was not done in vane.

Ray

Officer of Engineers

Sir,

Are you saying that now AQ is being creditted with the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan? Too bad most don't have any money. I've got some nice waterfront property I want to sell.

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Chimo

Ray

Officer of Engineers

Sir,

As stated, the Taliban never fought the Soviets. They were formed long after the Soviets left. Same with aQ although OBL did fight in that war (his exploits were far overblown), he was certainly not the leader he claimed he was.

lwarmonger

Sir, since when has truth had anything to do with the information that arabs see and believe? According to Al Jazeera, our troops should be still getting pushed back across the Iraqi border by Saddam's Republican Guard.

I am always amazed by the human willingness to believe what they want to, rather than what evidence would indicate.