Qaeda can't launch 9/11-type attack: Panetta
22 January, 2012
WASHINGTON: Al Qaeda no longer possesses the ability to put up a command-and-control structure to launch a 9/11-type strike, but the US still needs to go after the outfit and maintain the "pressure" on it, said US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta. "It doesn't have the ability to put command and control together to make the kind of plans for the kind of attacks we saw on 9/11," Panetta said at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland. "Al Qaeda, the enemy that attacked this country on 9/11, that made the war on terrorism something that all of us were committed to fight - we have significantly impacted on Al Qaeda. Its leadership is decimated," Panetta said. Noting that the US had successfully gone after the Al Qaeda leadership, not only Osama bin Laden but other top commanders as well, the defence secretary emphasised the need to continue that pressure. "We need to keep going after them wherever they go, whether it's Yemen or Somalia or North Africa. We need to continue the pressure on them. But we are... we are working to significantly weaken their capability. We've been good at it," he said. In Libya, Panetta said, the US had a successful NATO mission that helped bring down Muammar Gaddafi and return Libya to its people. End.
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