Quote:
Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
you linked article cites 18000 aQ guys being around. this number comes from an estimate that 20000 were trained in Afghanistan and then we killed 2000. It has nothing to do with Iraq. Given these kind of recruiting numbers, a slight uptick in volunteers ain't such a bid deal, is it?
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The estimate does indeed calculate those trained in Afghanistan, but it also notes that "[d]riving the terror network out of Afghanistan in late 2001 appears to have benefited the group, which dispersed to many countries, making it almost invisible and hard to combat, the story said.
And the Iraq conflict "has arguably focused the energies and resources of al-Qaida and its followers while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition that appeared so formidable" after the Afghan intervention, the survey said. "
The point being that AQ is much more decentralized than before, and that they may well be benefitting (in relative size) from the activities to date. As I mentioned before, it's too soon to tell what the water level in the bathtub really is these days.
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