With Troop Drawdown, A More Clandestine War on Al-Qaida

The Takeaway

A week after President Obama announced the time line for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, his top counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, says the US war on al-Qaida is far from over. Immediately following the death of Osama bin Laden, Brennan said in an interview on NBC’s Today Show that the US would continue to “pummel the rest of Al Qaida.” Now that goal is being laid out in the form of official strategy, with the U.S. vowing to focus more on clandestine operations and attacks to take out key leaders of the terrorism network. Eric Schmitt, senior writer and terrorism correspondent for The New York Times, talks with us about this shift in strategy.  

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