Al Qaeda now incapable of 9/11-scale attack: U.S. officials

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Al Qaeda now incapable of 9/11-scale attack: U.S. officials

By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON | Fri Apr 27, 2012 6:35pm EDT

(Reuters) - Al Qaeda's core organization is likely incapable of carrying out another mass-casualty attack on the scale of September 11, 2001, U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials said on Friday.

U.S. government experts also believe that the likelihood of an attack using chemical, biological, atomic or radiological weapons over the next year was not high, said Robert Cardillo, deputy director of U.S. National Intelligence.

Cardillo and other U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described these assessments on a conference call with journalists billed as an opportunity for government experts to voice their assessments of al Qaeda's potency a year after the killing of Osama bin Laden in a U.S. commando raid.

Cardillo said the al Qaeda "core" organization that bin Laden created has suffered strategic setbacks due to the outbreak of "Arab Spring" protests and rebellions in Islamic countries, which have not spread great sympathy for al Qaeda's hardline and violent brand of Islam.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/27/us-usa-alqaeda-idUSBRE83Q1BX20120427

[Politicalboi]

1. Incapable now

And incapable before too. But we all have our own opinions on 9/11, and other questionable acts that happened throughout our history. We're NEVER going to get the answers.

[2on2u]

2. But still, the republican party is capable of just about anything. n/t

[zappaman]

3. Does this mean the TSA can stop fingering my butthole? n/t

[rfranklin]

7. No, they need something to amuse themselves with...l

and sniffing their fingers after examining you is it.

[Journeyman]

4. But if anything, didn't the "official" story detail how cheaply the attack was carried out . . .

and how ultimately low-tech the entire operation proved to be?

Wasn't so much of the fear over the past decade based on the oft-repeated assertion that such an attack could be carried out by anyone, at any time? My god, they're scanning my junk and groping my ass because someone traveling in coach stuffed his tennis shoes with cheap, low-grade explosives, then tried to ignite them with a Bic lighter!

And now they want me to feel good because some mid-level bureaucrat who fancies himself an "expert" says the likelihood of something that no one ever believed would happen is now remote because something they claim was cheap and easy is now deemed expensive and difficult.

As far as I'm concerned, they can just give us back the rights and privileges they stole from us and keep their worthless opinions to themselves.

[Zorra]

5. The main reason being that Bush and Cheney are long gone from the WH. nt

[ljm2002]

6. Absurd...

...since they would have said the very same thing on 9/10/2001. Unless, of course, Al Qaeda never did it in the first place, in which case the statement is merely irrelevant rather than absurd.