U.S. General: We're Working 24/7 To Catch bin Laden

I'm going to go out on a limb here. I'm predicting that a major story comes out in the next four weeks about bin Laden's location. We may not nab him in that time but it is going to become apparent that we are very close to his trail. I'll go one step further. By the end of January 2008, Osama bin Laden will either be in U.S. custody or verified dead.

What a New Year's present that would be, eh?

Here's the story of Lt. Gen. David Barno's take on the search for bin Laden as well as some great insights in fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Dec 12, 2007 22:28 Updated Dec 13, 2007 4:25
US general: We're working 24/7 to catch bin Laden
By YAAKOV KATZ

The United States will not relent in its pursuit of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden until he is captured, Lt.-Gen. (ret.) David Barno, the former commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday

"We are operating 24 hours a day and seven days a week until he is captured," said Barno, who today directs the Near East South Asia Center, a US Defense Department body established in 2000 to foster positive relations and understanding in the region. "As long as we are in Afghanistan, this is still a strong focus," he said.
Barno, a guest speaker at the Institute for National Security Studies security challenges conference in Tel Aviv, headed the Combined Forces Command from 2003 to 2005. He said that in the past six months Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan had increased their attacks against coalition forces. There were a dozen suicide attacks in 2005, and last year there were 160, he said.

Maj.-Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland of the Institute for National Security Studies said there were similarities between the Taliban and the terrorist groups that the IDF fights. "There is a lot of similarity in the nature of the conflicts," said Eiland, who up until 2006 was Israel's national security adviser. "They learn from one another."
Eiland warned that al-Qaida and global jihad forces were working to penetrate Israel and were exploiting "vacuum areas" such as Lebanon and Jordan. He said that at the moment, there did not appear to be an al-Qaida presence in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank.