Let me just counter with this and then I'll set this issue aside and allow moss to grow over it as it richly deserves.
Core AQ operated out of Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan (AfPak). By all accounts, all but one of its primary leaders have been killed or captured. Moreover, AQ no longer operates out of Afghanistan or Pakistan as their primary base of operations. Your quoted commentary in post #33 even validates much of this.
So, if core AQ wasn't "decimated, dismantled, weakened", why would they leave AfPak and try to set up safe haven in Yemen? And if efforts to go after the AQ spin-offs wasn't effective, why would their "senior operational guys" leave there to establish their new base of operations in Syria? Your argument would be valid if the old AQ was still in tact operating out of AfPak and new terror cells were popping up in other countries OR even if new AQ spin-offs were setting up shot in other countries and being highly affective, but that doesn't seem to be what's happening. The evidence shows something different. These groups are on the run trying to set up shot wherever they believe they might be able to gain a foothold particularly in countries that have no central government or national defense to stop them.
Furthermore, it's false to claim in one post that the President "ignored" ISIL as a viable terrorist threat but then state firmly that he "raised the threat level" because he was aware of the threat they posed. Again, from your post #33:
As much as people try to paint such a bleak picture of how the President is handling global terrorism, I think too many people look at things through ideologically tinted glasses. I'm not saying he's handled everything right, but I'm a long way from saying he ignored the problem or has done nothing to try to remedy the situation where AQ or its spin-offs are concerned.
Well the only Moss I might watch is Carrie.....especially if she is wearing that Latex and Spiked heels.
They still operate out Afghanistan and Pakistan. Note it said Senior Operational Guys....now we all know the Z Man isn't Operational.
Well if you have been reading any of AQ Ideology and read what they have said.....they have always been about spreading to other countries. Also there have been New Terror cells popping up. Which is why the Z-man announced their new Chapter in India.
Moreover.....Bin Laden's Driver, Core AQ was the one to create the Ansar Al Sharia factions.....Which range from Yemen to Libya.
Like you mentioned about cutting off the head of the serpent.....except the concept was Hydra not serpent. Which means Morph.....which they did. The Invisible Sheik was answering to AQ prime in the beginning. ISIL - AQ in the Levant.
Not at all with the threat level.....which the links showed why. At that time.....before then he would be told directly from Maliki that ISIL was more of threat than just in Iraq. Which was Nov of last year. But BO denied assistance.
Obama Meets Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki As Terror Rages Across Country.....
President Obama's proud political boast is that he ended the Iraq war, but on Friday, he will come face-to-face with a man who is still fighting it -- Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The Iraqi leader visits the White House as Al-Qaeda sows terror in Iraq's Shiite community, with a surge of suicide and car bombings, drawing analogies to the darkest days of sectarian bloodletting during the US occupation. Two years after the last US soldier left Iraq, Americans have largely moved on from a war which killed nearly 4,500 US troops, tens of thousands of civilians and drained the US Treasury. But the carnage in Iraq -- where more than 700 people have died in violence this month alone -- is stirring fears the country may again slide into an abyss exacerbated by the brutal war rending Syria next door. "The security situation is not only bad... it not only could reverse all of the gains of 2008, it could tear the country apart if both Maliki and the United States do not act quickly," said James Jeffrey, until last year, the US ambassador to Iraq, who is now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Maliki, blamed by some Iraq watchers in Washington for marginalizing Sunnis and sinking a well of sectarian anger for extremists to exploit, is blunt about the challenge.
"The terrorists found a second chance," he said in a speech in Washington Thursday, warning Al-Qaeda and allied groups were a "virus." Maliki has a wish list of US military hardware, including attack helicopters to go with already ordered fighter jets to help his ill-equipped military battle insurgents. There is a certain irony in his request -- given the failure of Iraqi and US negotiators to agree legal immunity for US troops that would have allowed a residual American force to stay behind in Iraq. Iraq's slide back into violence has revived questions here about the wisdom of the complete US withdrawal, the Maliki government's conduct since and America's future relationship with a nation it invaded in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein.....snip~
Obama Meets Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki As Terror Rages Across Country
