The Unites States has decimated the core leadership of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the White House has said.
“Prior to 2001, core al-Qaeda was operating in a virtual vacuum in the area between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and used that essentially lawless as a base of operations to launch an attack against the United States of America,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at his daily news conference.
“Since that time, members of the military, intelligence community and others have worked to mitigate that threat, and, in fact, decimated the core al-Qaeda leadership that previously was operating with impunity in that area,” he said.
The spokesman said that US continues to face are elements that are either sympathetic to al-Qaeda or associate themselves with the ideology of al-Qaeda in other remote areas of the world and pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.
“This administration is working round the clock to mitigate and counter those threats and bring those terrorists to justice. And the (US) President’s record on that is incredibly strong,” he asserted.
