Despite progress, 'the cancer has metastasized,' Panetta said. Panetta: Al Qaeda 'decimated'

Ever since United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice used “decimate” to describe Al Qaeda in September, Republicans have been crying foul: The terrorist organization cannot be decimated if it’s also behind the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Now, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is weighing in. Al Qaeda’s leadership has been decimated, if not the organization itself, he declared Tuesday night.


Speaking at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, Panetta qualified Rice’s statement that has come under fierce scrutiny from Republicans on Capitol Hill.

“Over the last few years, Al Qaeda’s leadership ranks have been decimated. This includes the loss of four of Al Qaeda’s five top leaders in the last two and a half years alone — Osama bin Laden, Sheikh Saeed al-Masri, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman and Abu Yahya al-Libi,” Panetta said.

The terrorist organization has not been eliminated and the administration knows this, Panetta said. “We have slowed the primary cancer — but we know that the cancer has metastasized to other parts of the global body.”

His remarks come after weeks of harsh GOP criticism of Rice for making a similar, although not exactly the same, claim.

“President Obama said when he was running for president that he would refocus our efforts and attentions on Al Qaeda. We've decimated Al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden is gone,” Rice said Sept. 16 on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Since then, Republicans have criticized her specifically for using the word “decimate,” implying it was meant to cover up the group’s responsibility for the Benghazi attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

“I think one of the reasons that Susan Rice told the story she did, if the truth came out a few weeks before the election that our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, had been overrun by an Al Qaeda-sponsored or affiliated militia, that destroys the narrative we’ve been hearing for months that Al Qaeda has been dismantled, bin Laden is dead, we’re safer,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Tuesday night, Panetta sought to qualify things. Al Qaeda has not been decimated, but its “leadership ranks” have been.

“This pressure has significantly demoralized and weakened al Qaeda core’s capabilities, and seriously disrupted active plotting against our homeland,” he said.

Even so, “disrupting, degrading, dismantling, and ultimately defeating” Al Qaeda remains at the top of the administration’s national security priority list, Panetta said.

That’s why there are still 68,000 U.S.troops in Afghanistan and why counter-terrorism operations continue in Yemen and Somalia, among other places, he said.

“We are also concerned about Libya, where violent extremists and affiliates of Al Qaeda attacked and killed innocent Americans in Benghazi,” Panetta said. “With respect to that attack, let me be clear: We will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice those who perpetrated these attacks.”

In Afghanistan, he added, the United States is committed to maintaining “an enduring presence and a long-term commitment to Afghanistan’s security.” And NATO has made a similar commitment, he noted.

The message to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, he said, is this: “We are not going anywhere; our commitment to Afghanistan is long-term; you cannot wait us out.”

Still, he said, the challenge is daunting.

“Yes, we have decimated core Al Qaeda. And, yes, we have made notable progress against its associated forces in Yemen and Somalia. And, yes, we have reduced the chance of a large scale terrorist attack against the United States,” Panetta said. “But the Al Qaeda cancer has also adapted to this pressure by becoming even more widely distributed, loosely knit and geographically dispersed. The fight against Al Qaeda has taken a new direction — one that demands that we be especially adaptable and resilient as we continue the fight.”

To prevail, he argued, the U.S. must invest not only in its military capabilities, but also in its powers of diplomacy.

“I, frankly, worry that our political system will prevent us from making the investments in diplomacy and development that we need to ensure we protect America’s interests in these volatile regions of the world,” Panetta said.

Because they don’t have a ready constituency on Capitol Hill, he said, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development face steep cuts given the increasing fiscal pressures.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 8:32 p.m. on November 20, 2012.