According to the a top British Newspaper (please click title for link), President Bush's homeland security adviser (see cartoon at left) is dead wrong when she alleges that the fugitive Al-Qaida is now "virtually impotent".The consensus of the nation's top intelligence analysts is that it is regrouping and growing in strength, intensifying efforts to put operatives in the United States and plotting against U.S. targets that will cause massive casualties. The U.S. is in a "heightened threat environment" and al-Qaida is the most serious threat, according to these analysts. "While he may be physically contained , his influence is not bounded by any physical barriers," says Thomas Sanderson, an authority on terrorism at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, the chairmen of the independent Sept. 11 commission said that though our defenses are better "we have become distracted and complacent". Senator John McCain also described bin Laden as a "great danger". "He continues to communicate, he continues to lead, and he continues to be a symbol for them of leadership in his radical hatred" commented McCain.
