Al Qaeda on the Run
Who says the war on terror isn't going well?
opinionjournal.com
Monday, March 3, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
Maybe the war on terror is going better than the critics claim. Certainly the capture Saturday of alleged September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the biggest prize so far.
The White House describes him as one of al Qaeda's "most senior and significant lieutenants," the figure behind almost every major terror attack in the past decade. The recent orange alert was caused in part by electronic intercepts concerning Mohammed and what he might be planning.
In addition to 9/11, Mohammed is a major suspect in the 1998 Africa embassy bombings and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen. He was indicted in the U.S. in 1996 for his alleged role in a foiled plot to blow up 12 civilian American planes over the Pacific. He is the uncle of Ramzi Yousef, convicted of the bombing of the World Trade Center 10 years ago last week and now serving a life sentence in a federal prison in Denver. Mohammed is also suspected of being the man who slit the throat of our Journal colleague, Danny Pearl.
Mohammed has been on the run for a decade, and his capture is a coup for U.S. intelligence. It's also a measure of the support the U.S. is getting from Pakistan, where he was picked up. It would be wrong, however, if President Musharraf thinks he's now paid his dues and can vote against the U.S. resolution on Iraq in the Security Council. The war on terror isn't over yet.
Mohammed's capture is also a direct rebuttal to the argument that the Bush Administration's focus on Iraq distracts from the pursuit of al Qaeda. The reverse is closer to the truth; the more we show we're serious about challenging states that harbor terrorists the more Pakistan and other nations are likely to cooperate with Washington in tracking down and turning over the terrorists.
Mohammed is now in the hands of U.S. authorities, who won't say where he is. Presumably that's a secure location--possibly Guantanamo--where he can be interrogated without recourse to the helping hands of defense lawyers, criminal courts and the like. Mohammed is a pivotal figure in al Qaeda and we need to find out what he knows, however long in cold storage it takes.
It's the nature of this kind of war that many of its advances cannot be heralded. But it's obvious that captured terrorists are a key source of information. In a declaration earlier this year to the court considering the case of alleged dirty bomber Jose Padilla, Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, attested to the importance of interrogations.
"The results of these interrogations have provided vital information to the President, military commanders and others involved in the War on Terrorism," he said. "It is estimated that more than 100 additional attacks on the United States and its interests have been thwarted since 11 September 2001." The emphasis is ours. |
