Al Qaida

Regarding your article "Obama: Troops out of Iraq by Dec 31, 2011" (Oct. ), it shows of poor judgment on President Obama's part to make such a decision when it could be interpreted as a political campaign ploy for the 2012 election. I think the U.S. should maintain a standing military force in Iraq just as we did - and still do - in Japan, Germany and South Korea to assure those peoples of our support for their democracies. A permanent military presence would also help prevent another civil war in Iraq and counter the influence of Iran, al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The debate over how the U.S. deals with suspected terrorists captured outside the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan flared up again last week when the Obama administration announced charges in New York against a Somali man with alleged ties to militant groups in North Africa and the Middle East. The move directly challenges a ban imposed by Congress last year that prohibits the government from transporting Guantanamo Bay detainees captured overseas to this country for trial in civilian courts.

During the campaign summer of 2008, candidate Obama said of Afghanistan, "This is a war that we have to win. " Yet now, although progress is being made the job is still very much unfinished, we find Obama as president extracting our resources from Afghanistan. Gen. David Petraeus, placed in charge of the Afghan mission by President Obama, opposes this troop reduction, as does outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is described as having "reluctantly accepted it. " The timetable Mr. Obama established a year and a half ago for a summer 2011 pullout, with no recommendation from any of our military leaders, never should have been set. In a football game would you tell the opponent in the second quarter that you plan to send in your third string to play the fourth quarter?

Over the past two years, Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula's (AQAP) global operational and ideological reach have added significant strategic depth to the besieged al-Qaida Senior Leadership organization (AQSL) in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now, with the leadership vacuum Osama bin Laden's death has created, coupled with an apparent succession crisis in Yemen, AQAP is likely, over the course of the next year, to displace AQSL as the "vanguard of the Muslim Ummah," as the group characterized itself in December, and become the principal driver of the al-Qaida movement's effort to attack the U.S. and its allies in Europe.

Professional wrestler Jesse Neal was relaxing at his home in Orlando, Fla., with his girlfriend a couple of Sundays ago when his phone was suddenly deluged with text messages. That's how Neal learned that Osama bin Laden had been killed that day in a firefight with U.S. forces. The news elicited a range of emotions. Along with feeling a sense of relief that justice had been done, Neal was transported back to Oct. 12, 2000 — the day the destroyer USS Cole was bombed in an attack directed by bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist organization.

As the most highly visible and destructive terrorist organization of our time, Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida has done more to shape concerns and fears about terrorism than any other terrorist organization in at least the last 50 years. What impact will bin Laden's death have on terrorism in the future? Is his brand of indiscriminate and brutal violence at an end? Of course, al-Qaida was never the only terrorist threat out there. More than 600 other groups have been engaged in terrorism worldwide since al-Qaida claimed its first attack in 1998.

Ten years, two wars, and countless false starts and wrong turns after the most terrible criminal act ever committed on American soil, the man responsible for nearly 3,000 deaths on Sept. 11, 2001, has been killed. It is unlikely that ever before in history have so many resources been committed to bringing one man to justice, and on Sunday, with a deadly precise raid on a compound deep within Pakistan, a group of Navy SEALs acting after years of work by the entire American intelligence community, erased years of failure and changed the face of the war on terrorism.

An Owings Mills High School graduate who is being held in military detention at Guantanamo Bay showed his willingness to become an al-Qaida martyr by participating in a plot to assassinate Pakistan's president, the government alleges in classified documents obtained by media outlets. The government also believes Majid Khan, who moved with his family from Pakistan to Baltimore County in 1996, was involved in funneling money used in a 2003 bombing of a Marriott hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, according to the documents provided to news outlets this week by WikiLeaks, a group opposed to government secrecy.

CHICAGO - Federal prosecutors charged a Chicago cab driver on Friday with attempting to provide funds for explosives to al-Qaida and discussing a possible bomb attack on an unspecified stadium in the United States this summer. Raja Lahrasib Khan, 56, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Pakistani origin, was charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. - Baltimore Sun News Services

- Osama bin Laden threatened in a new message released Thursday to kill any Americans al-Qaida captures if the U.S. executes the self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks or other al-Qaida suspects. In the 74-second audiotape aired on Al-Jazeera television, the al-Qaida leader explicitly mentions Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in Pakistan in 2003. He is the most senior al-Qaida operative in U.S. custody and is currently detained at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.