Stamping Out Cockroaches....

Is THIS Where Osama bin Laden Is Hiding ????

Today was a bit of a Good News - Bad News kind of day in the War on Terrorism. First, the good news.... In the Anbar Province of Iraq, once the most violent province in Iraq, the US handed over total control of the region to the Iraqi peacekeeping forces. In short, the area that was once the stronghold of Al-Qaeda, and where every third US soldier was killed, is now under total Iraqi control, and peaceful. Critique all you want about how the US handled the first four years, the surge has worked, thanks to guys like my Cousin Christopher....

Now the bad news. It's pretty obvious that we didn't kill every Al-Qaeda fighter, although some may have quit and gone home. But there is good proof that Al-Qaeda has moved it's base into Pakistan, near the Afghan border. Worse, they haven't done a whole lot to stop them.

Rehman Malik, pakistan's interior ministry chief, admitted that Al-Qaeda Number 2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri was recently in Mohmand Province, and officials did nothing. In the mountainous region along the Afghan-Pakistan border, Al-Qaeda is pretty free to do as it please, as it has since the fall of the Taliban in 2002. I had a Florence police officer by the name of Mike Krell, who served two tours in Afghanistan, give a slide show of his efforts there. While most of it was patrolling, doing humanitarian work and infrastructure building, there was a disturbing part to his presentation....

He showed a small river on the border, with high mountains on the opposite side. Krell explained that while they were constantly lobbed by rockets from Pakistan, they could not fire into Pakistan, thus making it an obvius safe haven. That still has not changed. Pakistan must at some point root these terrorists out and make all of Pakistan safe. But it is a more extremist country than Iraq or Jordan or even Palestine. The Pro-US , anti-terrorism feeling just isn't there...

So, will we ever be able to stamp out Al-Qaeda for good? Maybe, but I think we can minimalize their strength to ever affect us again, if done correctly. A free Iraq is way more important than a free Afghanistan or a free Pakistan - but I'd like a Free World. Hey, I can dream.......

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