“Al Qaeda has been decimated” sez Prez

The President was in Wisconsin today and he told the crowd that “al Qaeda has been decimated”. Well, the original definition of the word is “reduced by ten percent” so he might be correct. From the Washington Times;

The president made the ire-inducing remark during a campaign stop at Austin Straubel International Airport Thursday morning where he spoke to a crowd of some 2,600 people. Obama, wearing a flight-jacket, addressed Hurricane Sandy relief efforts, then touched on the economy but highlighted what he framed as his accomplishments in foreign policy, including smiting Osama bin Laden and yes, “decimating al Qaeda.”

Well, there might be some argument on that point, if he meant decimated in the more modern sense. Like from the Chinese;

Chinese state media say Chinese Muslim separatists from the far northwestern region of Xinjiang are fighting alongside al-Qaida and other extremist groups opposed to Syria’s government.

Or the Spanish;

Spanish police have arrested six members of an al-Qaeda cell in Barcelona that was dedicated to providing a related terrorist cell in Germany with large numbers of stolen passports.

Or the Iraqis;

Al-Qaida is rebuilding in Iraq and has set up training camps for insurgents in the nation’s western deserts as the extremist group seizes on regional instability and government security failures to regain strength, officials say.

Iraq has seen a jump in al-Qaida attacks over the last 10 weeks, and officials believe most of the fighters are former prisoners who have either escaped from jail or were released by Iraqi authorities for lack of evidence after the U.S. military withdrawal last December. Many are said to be Saudi or from Sunni-dominated Gulf states.

Or the president’s own Secretary of Defense;

Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar Dine are two militant groups suspected of human rights violations after they claimed autonomy in northern Mali following an early 2012 coup. U.N. officials said there were alleged reports of at least three recent summary executions, eight amputations and two floggings in northern Mali.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said al-Qaida must not be allowed to gain a foothold or “develop a command-and-control capability” in countries like Mali. “I believe the effort now ought to be to work with nations in that region to ensure that al-Qaida does not develop that kind of base in Mali,” he said.

Should we worry about the Burkha Brigade?

Al Qaeda has formed an all-female ‘Burkha Brigade’ whose cadres are being trained to infiltrate and hit military bases and official buildings in the Western nations as they are less likely to attract suspicion than men.

A film posted by fanatics online shows the all-female unit of Al Qaeda using a fearsome array of weapons, including machine-guns, grenade rocket launchers and sniper rifles during their training session at an unknown place.

The women are thought to have been recruited from the war-torn Russian republic of Chechnya by an Al Qaeda-linked group, with bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, British tabloid The Sun reported on Sunday.

I don’t think “decimated” means what the President thinks it means.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Terror War