war. so america s retreat is directly responsible for this and remember, paul, in may of 2013, president obama gave a big speech at national defense university of washington in which he said that core al qaeda is on a path it defeat and threat we face come from essentially a smaller offshoot al qaeda group that really pose nothing worse than the kind of terrorism we used to face in the 1980s. isn t he right about core al qaeda in the pakistan/afghan border? it was always an ideology, a meth method, a network. yes, you re right. what we had in the northwest frontier for the time being has been diminished. but it is me taft sized? iraq, syria, north africa, yemen. and one of the points that joe makes at author of the ram study right.