al-Qaeda

Did 9/11 Make Peace Passe?

Peace has never been a particularly popular word in Washington, DC. This is, after all, the home of the Pentagon and the major military contractors, not to mention all the think tanks and congressional lapdogs that lie in the king-size family bed with them. But the word “peace” has acquired such a negative reputation inside the Beltway that the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), which saw Congress nearly ax all its funding over the summer, is now considering a name change.

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Al-Qaeda Lost the Battle Long Ago

Al-Qaeda Lost the Battle Long Ago

Osama bin Laden didn’t live to see the 10th anniversary of September 11. And his organization, according to many U.S. government insiders, is on its last legs since his death at the hands of U.S. Special Forces in May. “We’re within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaeda,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently observed. Others disagree, pointing to the strength of al-Qaeda in Yemen.

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Review: The Interrogator

Review: The Interrogator

Glenn Carle has spent his whole professional life operating in the grey world of intelligence. As a case officer for the CIA for over two decades, he spent time in many of the Agency’s most critical outposts, from Nicaragua to Lebanon to Iraq. Yet at the end of his career, when he was “surged” to direct the interrogation of a suspected high-level member of al-Qaeda, he was confronted with the policies of an administration that crossed a line that made him certain that he must stand up against what he knew to be wrong.

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U.S. Escalates War Against Al-Qaeda

“Every time civilians are killed, you almost always do more harm than good,” agreed Carnegie’s Boucek. “You turn off the Yemeni people from wanting to co-operate; you turn off the government, because it looks like they’re facilitating it. It breeds further radicalization and makes it appear that Americans only care about terrorism, which is a pretty small issue compared to the challenges that Yemen faces and that lead to state failure or collapse,” he added. 

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Washington Still Refuses to Learn an Obvious Lesson

Washington Still Refuses to Learn an Obvious Lesson

Back in 2004, three years into the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 Commission report made its debut to the gushing admiration of the Washington press corps. The report was everything that the mainstream media adores: bipartisan, devoid of divisive finger-pointing, full of conventional wisdom.

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The War Against Al Jazeera and Sami al-Hajj

The War Against Al Jazeera and Sami al-Hajj

Sami Al-Hajj was classified as an “enemy combatant” whose “access to senior terrorist leaders demonstrates his probable connections to the al-Qaida network and other militant jihadist organizations.” He was presented as “a member of al-Qaida who is an expert in logistics with direct ties to al-Qaida leadership.” However, new evidence has come to light that now shows the U.S. government hoped to use al-Hajj as an intelligence source, perhaps even an informant, to spy on Al Jazeera’s operations, or to track down Taliban and al Qaeda leaders.

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