" TAPPER: How many Al Qaida do you think are in Afghanistan?

PANETTA: (...) we're looking at maybe 60 to 100, maybe less."

"As Philip Giraldi points out, this kind of assessment raises some Very Important Questions, like: "If CIA Director Leon Panetta is correct and al-Qaeda has been reduced to a tiny remnant (IN AFGHANISTAN - my comment) why are we spending nearly a trillion dollars a year on defense, intelligence, and homeland security?"

Because except the few AQ members/affiliates in Afghanistan, there is a transnational Salafi jihad movement posing a wider threat. The problem is not only AQ in Afghanistan. And as Panetta said "It's (ALSO) in that vicinity. There's no question that the main location of Al Qaida is in tribal areas of Pakistan...."

and NOT ONLY... the few AQ in Afghanistan are part of a bigger, more global problem present beyond Af-Pak.

" TAPPER: How many Al Qaida do you think are in Afghanistan?

PANETTA: (...) we're looking at maybe 60 to 100, maybe less."

"As Philip Giraldi points out, this kind of assessment raises some Very Important Questions, like: "If CIA Director Leon Panetta is correct and al-Qaeda has been reduced to a tiny remnant (IN AFGHANISTAN - my comment) why are we spending nearly a trillion dollars a year on defense, intelligence, and homeland security?"

Because except the few AQ members/affiliates in Afghanistan, there is a transnational Salafi jihad movement posing a wider threat. The problem is not only AQ in Afghanistan. And as Panetta said "It's (ALSO) in that vicinity. There's no question that the main location of Al Qaida is in tribal areas of Pakistan...."

and NOT ONLY... the few AQ in Afghanistan are part of a bigger, more global problem present beyond Af-Pak.

The fact is, Al Qaeda's abilities to execute Grand Guignol-kind of attacks appears to be nil. There have been plenty of opportunities over the past five years for AQ to launch the kind of attack that would put fear into the heart of the West -- the USA-England World Cup match, most recently -- and there's been nothing. Even if Captain Underpants or the Times Square bomber had succeeded, the carnage would have been on a far lower scale than the 9/11 attacks.

I wonder about that myself. You'd think it wouldn't be too hard for them to do something cheap that would cause a lot of ground-level terror, like sneaking a couple guys across the Mexican border with assault rifles and shooting up some malls. Maybe it is, or maybe they have a weird obsession with airplane attacks.

Isn't it time that some rational cost-benefit analysis was applied to counter-terrorism policies? In a world where "The [defense budget] gusher has been turned off, and will stay off for a good period of time," isn't it time for political leaders to argue in favor of resource retrenchment, even if it increases the probability of a successful attack just a smidgen?

Good luck getting that adopted. This is the same country that has spent 40 years fighting a futile War on Drugs because "no amount of drugs is acceptable" or the like. Actually telling the public that it will save them money if they accept a smidgen-higher risk of terrorism is a No-Go.

That movie looks awful.

TAPPER: "How many Al Qaida do you think are in Afghanistan?"

PANETTA: "I think the estimate on the number of Al Qaida is actually relatively small. I think at most, we're looking at maybe 60 to 100, maybe less. It's in that vicinity."

In other words, there are 60 to 100 al Qaida in Afghanistan.

PANETTA: "There's no question that the main location of Al Qaida is in tribal areas of Pakistan...."

In other words, there are more al Qaida in Pakistan. Panetta doesn't say how many, but his wording suggests that the count is greater than 100.

DREZNER: "If CIA Director Leon Panetta is correct and al-Qaeda has been reduced to a tiny remnant why are we spending nearly a trillion dollars a year on defense, intelligence, and homeland security?"

Regardless of how you read Panetta's comments, this is a non sequitur. We have other threats. An argument can be made that we are spending too much, but this isn't it.

Every time we lose one guy to some nickel and dime terror attack, its given more coverage than 100 people lost to criminal activity or industrial accidents. Its pathetic. The simple fact is that America would not suffer any real, more-than-symbolic damage from one hundred Fort Hood shooters and Underwear Bombers if they were sucsessful. We could have a dozen sucsessful terror attacks per year and nothing would happen. We could have a hundred and practically nothing would happen. We should start evaluating this with some objectivity. We dont freak out if a criminal or a psycopath kills a dozen people, why is it different if a terrorist does it?

Homeland security isn't about security and the War on terror isn't a real war. The War on Terror was a knee-jerk political reaction to 9/11 that was based on revenge and projecting strength. Homeland Security was the political apparatus born out of the 'never again' mentality of 9/11 and is a bureaucracy designed to give politicians cover and give them credentials when they say 'we're doing something about terrorism'.

Unfortunately these counter terrorism apparatchiks are incapable of thinking outside of the box when it comes to terrorism. Terrorism has become 9/11 and Al Qaeda, anything else is superfluous to them. Panetta simply has to say 'Al Qaeda' and most of the public then agrees with whatever he says after that, just as they did with Bush and now with Obama.

In light of this I'm not surprised that the main target of counter terrorism 'experts' in the West continues to be Al Qaeda and Afghanistan.

Obviously Panetta was probably referring to Al Qaeda cadres being 60 to 100 that can NOT include those in Pakistan.

Afterall let us NOT forget that it was Pakistan’s own democratic government that facilitated relocation of Osama bin Laden from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996.

Let us NOT forget that Osama bin Laden used to visit Pakistan often during his stay in Afghanistan.

Let us NOT forget that Osama bin Laden had publicly congratulated Pakistan for exploding world’s first Islamic nuclear bomb.

Let us NOT forget that Pakistani government has permitted Osama bin Laden to build a palace on the outskirts of Muridke in Pakistan.

Let us NOT forget that Pakistani Army used to provide military protection to Osama bin Laden during his umpteen visits to Pakistan.

Let us NOT forget that Osama bin Laden has received many dialysis treatments at Pakistan’s military hospitals.

Let us NOT forget that Osama bin Laden has made huge campaign contributions to Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s election campaigns.

Let us NOT forget that Nawaz Sharif has personally met Osama bin Laden at least three times in Saudi Arabia at Nawaz Sharif’s own request.

Your absolutely right; Al'Qaeda's capabilities have diminished over the last decade, making it extremely difficult for the organization to plan, launch, and successfully execute another 9/11 style attack. But from some of the research out there, AQ's inability to kill a mass quantity of Americans may not just be the result of recruitment struggles or financial pressure. Al'Qaeda's core leadership in the Pakistani tribal areas has come to endorse the quick, small-scale attacks overseas that paralyze the population.

Bin-Laden (if he's still more than a figure head at this point is anyone's guess) & Company understand that they no longer have a strength in numbers...Panetta's assessment of 60 to 100 fighters in Afghanistan seems to confirm this. But Al'Qaeda isn't sitting on their heels and reminiscing back to the glory days when they had a safe haven with a few thousand fighters at their disposal. Instead, they are adapting to the changing environment, setting up franchises across the Middle East and North Africa (AQAP, AQI, AQM) and they are changing their attack strategy.

The threat is still there, so the idea that the U.S. Government to start cutting money from national-security is not really politically acceptable at this point. I'm not sure if it ever will be. Instead, perhaps we should be using existing funds more efficiently so we don't have to expand the defense budget in the near future. Plus, the defense budget now is at an extenuating circumstance; the United States is not normally engulfed in two wars.

http://www.depetris.wordpress.com

The Professor’s assumption here is that the natural state of humans and our various undertakings is one of reason, all else being a deviation from that. The assumption is inverted; our natural state is emotional and reasoning is an ability acquired only through experience or education. The more people know, the more thoughtful less emotional they are, and the less they know the more they rely on emotion rather than thought. By “know”, I do not mean having opinions which are simply unsubstantiated convictions, or even beliefs which are at best a larval stage of knowledge; rather I mean actually knowing something.

Today we have an incalculable amount of information floating around for everyone to wallow in, most of it expressed in a handful of words employed with distinctly or subtly different meanings. The result of this exponential explosion is that few people any longer have any idea what they are actually talking or writing about. This doesn’t stop them but it means that the source of their output is their feelings not their heads. Sarah Palin might be regarded as a poignant example of the phenomenon.

Add to this the speed at which extra-contextual bits of information flash almost instantly before so many and one begins to see how numerous simultaneous emotional responses may come together like a tidal wave. The recent Israeli flotilla interception provides an example. There were TV journalists on board the Mavi Mamara with video equipment as well as hundreds of passengers with cameras and telephones all of which the Israelis confiscated while releasing their own film version of events which was widely broadcast and emotionally absorbed. A thinking response would have been to realise that these images were all from one side with a particular case to make and reserve judgement until the others surfaced. A few people did think that way but their voices were drowned

The same thing applies to counter-terrorism; no one knows enough about it to be rational so we are swept along on an emotional response unsusceptible to reason. In scale at any rate this is very much a 21st century phenomenon that demands study since it is becoming increasingly easy for some to manipulate it.