d.o.d. has sent those armed peace keepers and trainers to cameroon. to say nothing of the reemergence of al qaeda. you would think all those things happening in afghanistan that the white house, president, might rethink the decision to draw down from u.s. force levels. doesn t look like that will be the case. listen to josh ernest today. it continues to be important. there s no denying that the risk that s posed by those terrorist elements inside of afghanistan is significantly lower than the risks posed by core al qaeda pre- 9/11. draw down will continue? this is part of the policy decision that we announced the
to have a sanctuary in afghanistan for much of the 1990s and part of the 2000s. the taliban had been staging massive attacks across kabul, trying to reassert their authority and gain bargaining power in peace talks, u.s. officials believe. but zawahiri s move may be trying to keep his al qaeda also in play. i think it puts to rest the contention that we can somehow put the taliban back into the power structure in afghanistan without bringing al qaeda back into the country. zawahiri and his core al qaeda group have been locked in a battle for months. zawahiri sat by bin laden s side during the 9/11 attacks and still has not faced justice. but now, a new more violent generation of isis militants is
can hide. you say he doesn t have a digital trail. can this audio message help u.s. officials track him in any way? isn t there a courier or someone interacting with him, similar to osama bin laden to help track him? certainly they could, pam, but i think the big issue here is that both the taliban and al qaeda, core al qaeda, zawahiri, and the young fighters are young and aggressive. many probably 10 years old at the time of 9/11. so they look at these old guys as they ve been in hiding for ten years. they re cowards. they re no good. osama bin laden got a lot of credit, so he could hide. but for zawahiri, they have to come out a little bit, try to get some invigoration into the young leaders. this would not be my number
counterterrorism official. also terrorism analyst paul cruickshank. thank you for being with us. we have so much to talk about here. let s go to what the president just said. he said we have to step up our game against lone wolves. phil how do you do that? i imagine social media would be a key component in that fight. it s got to be because if you look at traditional intelligence operations for example, intercepting communications from a core al qaeda group to operators in europe and the united states watching travel patterns for example, how they develop cells, these traditional methods to look for vulnerabilities aren t available here. so you look at whatter haver inability what vulnerability a kid in a basement has, is he looking at things online that are worrisome? the last thing i would say on this as a former practitioner s( the big problem is that s a big free speech issue. it s not illegal to be radical in the united states and it s not illegal to look at radical literatu
i think the important thing is though that you have got say you have got say okay what do we gain from this program versus what are the risks and clearly this is one of the risks. on the other hand, this program has been extremely effective in degrading the leadership of core al qaeda. and it is done so in a way that has really minimize edd excess damage. this program is very heavily looked at. we get monthly briefings. we have seen it. we have been to the places where it s done. we have seen how it s done and seen the feeds. that doesn t mean it s perfect overite oversight. and, the real question is okay