U.S. believes it can now destroy al Qaeda

WASHINGTON,  (Reuters) – The United States will aim to  destroy al Qaeda’s central organization now that its leader  Osama bin Laden has been killed and its capabilities degraded  by U.S. operations, a top White House adviser said today.
Since the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, al Qaeda  has spawned affiliated groups in the Middle East and North  Africa and inspired attacks by so-called home-grown militants  in Europe and the United States.
But White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan said  bin Laden’s death was the latest in a series of U.S. operations  that have delivered “severe body blows” to al Qaeda’s central  network in Pakistan and Afghanistan over the past year.
“We’re going to try to take advantage of this opportunity  we have now with the death of al Qaeda’s leader, bin Laden, to  ensure that we’re able to destroy that organization,” Brennan  told NBC’s Today show. “We’re determined to do so and we  believe we can.”
“We believe that we have damaged the organization, degraded  its capability and made it much more difficult for it to  operate inside of Pakistan as well as beyond.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry said  in an MSNBC interview on Monday that U.S. drone strikes in  Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas had killed as  many as 17 senior al Qaeda leaders before bin Laden’s death.
Brennan spoke a day after world leaders and security  experts urged increased vigilance against possible retaliatory  strikes by al Qaeda.
CIA director Leon Panetta warned on Monday that bin Laden’s  death would “almost certainly” prompt his Islamist supporters  to attempt some sort of retaliation.
But Brennan said U.S. officials were aware of no specific  threat, nearly 48 hours after bin Laden’s death.
“But what we’re doing is, we’re taking all those prudent  measures that we need to whenever there’s an incident of  significance like this,” Brennan said in a separate interview  on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“Right now, I think we feel pretty confident that we are at  the right posture.”