Word: al-qaeda
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...being quietly dropped by the new administration. It had served a purpose to facilitate the politics of fear during the Bush years, but it was becoming a serious burden for US approaches to the Muslim world. It became obvious to many cool headed observers that, while the likes of al-Qaeda and other extremists were still dangerous, they were in fact small hard-line groups. The vast Muslim world was ready for a more respectful and sympathetic approach from a saner US government. How else can one interpret the joyous scenes that followed the election of Barack Obama in most...
...posturing nearly drowned out the testimony of the only man at the hearing who had real experience extracting vital information from al-Qaeda terrorists: former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan. With cameras turned away from his face in order to protect his identity, Soufan gave a detailed account of the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. The suspected al-Qaeda operative, he said, was giving up actionable intelligence - including the identities of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the so-called dirty bomber, Jose Padilla - long before the controversial interrogation techniques were applied. Once the harsh methods were used, Abu Zubaydah just shut...
Soufan made an impassioned case against harsh interrogation, not only on moral grounds, but also because it is "slow, ineffective and unreliable." Al-Qaeda operatives, he pointed out, are used to much worse torture in Middle Eastern prisons...
...Praised (and inadvertently outed as a commander) by President George W. Bush in June 2006 after his special-ops team located and killed Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. McChrystal reportedly accompanied his men to the bombed-out hideaway in Baquba where al-Zarqawi lay to help identify the body...
...deadly March 2004 attacks in Madrid, but on Tuesday morning there was another grim reminder that the threat of terrorism is far from over. Italian police in the southern city of Bari announced that they are holding two French nationals whom authorities call "top-level point men" for "al-Qaeda in Europe" and who were allegedly plotting kamikaze strikes in France and the U.K. - including one purportedly targeting the Charles de Gaulle airport. Counter-terrorism authorities in Paris tell TIME, meanwhile, that they believe the pair is only one part of a wider jihadist network that is active in Europe...