Al Qaeda no longer possesses the ability to put up a command-and-control structure to launch a 9/11-type strike, Remind me why that is, Leon, and who the people are who, over the past ten years, have made this happen...
but the US still needs to go after the outfit and maintain the "pressure" on it, said US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta.
...current SecDef, previously Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta served as President Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997 and was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993....
"It doesn't have the ability to put command and control together to make the kind of plans for the kind of attacks we saw on 9/11," Panetta said at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland.
"Al Qaeda, the enemy that attacked this country on 9/11, that made the war on terrorism something that all of us were committed to fight - we have significantly impacted on Al Qaeda. Its leadership is decimated," Panetta said.
Noting that the US had successfully gone after the Al Qaeda leadership, not only the late Osama bin Laden
... who has left the building...
but other top commanders as well, the defence secretary emphasised the need to continue that pressure. "We need to keep going after them wherever they go, whether it's Yemen or Somalia or North Africa.
We need to continue the pressure on them. But we are... we are working to significantly weaken their capability. We've been good at it," he said. In Libya, Panetta said, the US had a successful NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions...
mission that helped bring down Muammar Qadaffy
...a proud Arab institution for 42 years, now among the dear departed, though not the dearest...
and return Libya to its people.