How well have we really done against Al Qaeda?

Historians have often said that we always fight new wars with lessons learned from the last one. Ten years ago, after the tragic events of 9/11, we were woefully unprepared for the battle against Al Qaeda. An organization that existed not in the physical space of a nation state, that might be dealt with by brute force, but rather as a 21st century decentralized network, that would require new methods and a new geopolitical mindset. This would be a war requiring intelligence, patience, technology and whole new ways of looking at the world. Long before the death of Bin Laden, US efforts had been effectively shrinking and neutralizing Al Qaeda. How we did this has been a little known story that is now told by Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker of the New York Times, in their book Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda.

My conversation with Eric Schmitt:

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The War Logs

Earlier this week we saw the release of some 92,000 reports that make up a six year archive of classified military documents.  These documents offer a raw picture of the nine year war in Afghanistan. While many have said these reports are but punctuation on what we already know, they paint a portrait far more damaging than anything we have hereto for been told by the administration or by the American military.

The documents were released though the controversial website WikiLeaks and released here in the US, exclusively to The New York Times. One of the lead journalists on the The New York Times team on this story, is two time Pulitzer Prize winner Eric Schmitt.

My conversation with Eric Schmitt:

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