U.S. Within Reach of Defeating Al Qaeda

Within reach, but Obama would rather pull the troops back home than finish the job!

10 to 20 key people and Al Qaida is done, so lets kill them first then start coming home. (and we might as well kill some more Taliban while we are st it )

Foxnews
The U.S. and its allies are within reach of defeating Al Qaeda after killing Usama bin Laden and gaining new insights about the terrorist group's other leading figures, new U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Saturday.

The former CIA director offered an upbeat assessment about the prospects for ending Al Qaeda's threat as he spoke with reporters flying with him on his first visit to Afghanistan since taking over as Pentagon chief July 1.

In a separate interview later, Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said he agreed with Panetta's assessment.

In the aftermath of the May 2 raid that killed bin Laden in Pakistan, the U.S. has determined that eliminating "somewhere around 10 to 20 key leaders" of Al Qaeda would cripple the network, Panetta said. Those leaders are in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and North Africa, he added.

"We're within reach of strategically defeating Al Qaeda," Panetta said, addressing reporters for the first time since succeeding Robert Gates as defense secretary.

"The key is that, having gotten bin Laden, we've now identified some of the key leadership within Al Qaeda, both in Pakistan as well as in Yemen and other areas," he said.