U.S. Believes Osama Bin Laden Is Still Alive
US believes Osama Bin Laden is still alive
US anti-terror chief says biological attack on West ‘simply a question of time’
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...-1-2006_pg7_12
(Gold9472: They NEED for him to be alive. They NEED the boogeyman.)
1/17/2006
LONDON: The United States believes that Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden is alive and hiding around the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, the US counter-terrorism coordinator told BBC radio on Tuesday.
US State Department official Henry Crumpton said that Bin Laden was believed to be somewhere in the border area, the region where an alleged US missile attack targeted Al Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahri on Friday. “We have no intelligence or evidence that indicates that he (Bin Laden) is dead or incapacitated, so our working assumption is that he is still alive,” Crumpton said. “I should also note, no sign of life from Bin Laden, I think reflects our collective success,” he said.
He warned that the group was still intent on launching further attacks on western countries, like the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. “Al Qaeda and affiliated groups have a strategic aim of attacking the US homeland – that is their intent, and we believe that they are working toward that. I think also that they intend to attack the UK again, and Europe,” he said.
He added: “I think and hope that Al Qaeda is more concerned about staying alive than plotting the next 9/11.”
Bin Laden has not been heard of since a December 27, 2004 audiotape in which he named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq’s most wanted man, as Al Qaeda’s leader in the war-torn country.
The air raid on Friday in Damadola, a village in the Bajaur tribal agency, targeted Al Qaeda’s deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, US intelligence sources have said, although Washington has not confirmed it launched the attack.
“I am very confident that we will at some point get Al Qaeda’s leadership, and we believe they are in that area,” Crumpton said. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Tuesday that he cannot accept actions like the air strike, adding that he will bring it up when he visits Washington this week.
Meanwhile, Crumpton warned that groups like Al Qaeda using weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against Western targets is only a matter of time.
Such an attack using biological agents could pose an even greater threat to security than a nuclear strike, Crumpton told Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper.
The former US Central Intelligence Agency officer also spoke of the changing nature of terrorism and how the fight against it was likely to last for “decades”. “We are talking about micro targets such as Al Qaeda which, when combined with WMD, have a macro impact. I rate the probability of terror groups using WMD (to attack Western targets) as very high,” he told the newspaper.
“It’s simply a question of time. And it is not just the nuclear threat that bothers me. I think, if anything, the biological threat is going to grow. As catastrophic as a nuclear attack would be, it would be self-contained. But if you look at a worst-case scenario for a biological attack, it would be difficult to determine whether or not it was a terrorist attack, and it would be far more difficult to contain.”
Crumpton said that following the 2001 war in Afghanistan against the ruling Taliban, allied forces had discovered that Al Qaeda had been working on anthrax programmes to use against the West. “They had hired a very experienced biologist to work on this. They were very serious about it and there is no reason to believe they have given up on their interest,” he said.
The official said fears that terrorist groups could acquire WMD from so-called rogue states like Iran or Syria were behind Washington’s determination to face down Tehran over its controversial nuclear programme. “If we look at the threat posed by Iran, they have links with Hezbollah (the Lebanese Shia Muslim militia), which is a terrorist organisation with a global reach, and they are actively pursuing WMD,” he explained. “And the leadership has made a conscious decision to defy international treaties. I am deeply troubled by this.” Crumpton said that the West had “made life very difficult” for the Al Qaeda network but more still needed to be done.
