Reuters : Al Qaeda threat to U.S. rebounds despite lull

Al Qaeda threat to U.S. rebounds despite lull

By Randall Mikkelsen | September 10, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With Osama bin Laden's ability to grab attention undiminished six years after the September 11 attacks, al Qaeda is bleeding the U.S. military in Iraq while regrouping with aims of another strike on the United States.

U.S. intelligence agencies and other analysts say security improvements and international efforts against al Qaeda have helped prevent another major U.S. attack, but only so far.

The ability of bin Laden's network to attack the West is rebounding, they say, and it has already met what some analysts describe as a goal of luring the United States into a damaging Middle East war that would cripple U.S. influence in the region.

Al Qaeda has also inspired cells and sympathizers who may be unable to strike on the scale of September 11 but can nevertheless cause death and destruction.

"Al Qaeda ... while weaker than it was on 9/11, is growing again in strength," U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in congressional testimony last week that echoed an official U.S. intelligence estimate in July.

"America faces a continued threat," he said.

In a reminder of al Qaeda's ability to grab attention, bin Laden last week issued a video saying the United States was vulnerable and Americans should embrace Islam to avert war.

Bin Laden made no overt threats, but security analysts said the message could be a call for new attacks. White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend rejected that view and described bin Laden as "virtually impotent."

Bin Laden escaped a U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks, and U.S. intelligence agencies believe al Qaeda has rebuilt in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area.

U.S. President George W. Bush, who said after the September 11 attacks he wanted bin Laden dead or alive, shifted his focus to Iraq and cast it as the central front in a war on terrorism.

TAKING THE BAIT

That shift may have played into bin Laden's hands.

"Part of what bin Laden's strategy is, is to bait us into situations where we bleed. Iraq is a godsend for al Qaeda. We took the bait," said security analyst P.J. Crowley of the Center for American Progress, a Democratic-leaning think tank.

The Iraq war made it easier for al Qaeda to kill Americans, through its al Qaeda in Iraq affiliate which is among the groups fighting U.S. forces in Iraq, said Mike German, a former FBI counterterrorism agent. German is now a policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union and adjunct professor at the National Defense University.

The war also created a rallying cry at a time bin Laden was crippled by loss of al Qaeda's Afghanistan sanctuary.

"No conflict drains more time, attention, blood, treasure and support for our worldwide counterterrorism efforts than the war in Iraq. It has become a powerful recruiting and training tool for al Qaeda," Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, co-chairmen of the U.S. government's September 11 investigation commission, wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece on Sunday.

The United States has made slow but real progress in detecting and preventing attacks within the United States, Kean and Hamilton wrote. Airline security has been tightened, and authorities are keeping a closer watch on potential attackers.

Among U.S. plots which authorities say they have disrupted were plans this year to attack Fort Dix military base in New Jersey and John F. Kennedy airport in New York. Both plots were attributed at least in part to Islamist elements, but neither was linked to al Qaeda.

Internationally, attack plots in Germany and Denmark with suspected ties to al Qaeda were broken up just last week.

INTERNATIONAL DEBATE

But other policies have drawn international criticism and debate over what critics call an assault on civil liberties.

Congressional Democrats say the Bush administration has overreached in its electronic and satellite surveillance, which German says have sapped money from more effective enforcement programs.

Internationally, "U.S. foreign policy has not stemmed the rising tide of extremism in the Muslim world," Kean and Hamilton wrote. "Instead we have lost ground."

They cited the "poisonous" example of the Guantanamo prison for terrorism suspects and an insufficient effort to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal as fuel for Islamist grievances.

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