Osama bin Laden and other high-ranking al Qaeda figures should be more than a little nervous these days. I believe the ongoing game of cat and mouse is about to end for them in much the same way as it appears to have ended for Adam Gadahn.
NPR is reporting that the Bush administration has approved a three-phase plan to capture top Al Qaeda leaders and has increased military strikes inside Pakistan to achieve this target. The plan, according to the report, represents an 11th-hour effort to go after al Qaeda until President Bush leaves office.
According to NPR, the raid by helicopter-borne US Special Operations forces in Pakistan last week was not an isolated incident but part of this three-phase plan approved by President Bush. The plan calls for a much more aggressive military campaign and authorizes US forces in Afghanistan to take part in operations inside Fata.
Definitely, the gloves have come off, a US official who has been briefed on the plan stated. This was only phase 1 of three phases.
The US intelligence community already had approval from President Bush to carry out operations inside Pakistan, including attacks by Predator drones, which can carry 100-pound Hellfire missiles. Additional authority came from the president just recently that allowed incursions by US Special Operations forces, the report said.
A second source told NPR that lawmakers on Capitol Hill were briefed on the new plan shortly before The New York Times broke the story this week about the Special Operations raid from Afghanistan into Pakistan. The source also said that CIA personnel from around the world were being pulled into the Afghan-Pakistan border area, an intelligence-community surge to go after Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda figures.
