Brennan: Counterterrorism strategy focused on al-Qaeda’s threat to homeland

[alp227]

Source: The Washington Post

President Obama’s counterterrorism strategy is narrowly focused on al-Qaeda and its ability to strike the U.S. homeland and is “not designed to combat directly every single terrorist organization in every corner of the world,” White House counterterrorism chief John O. Brennan said Wednesday.

Acknowledging that the president’s goals “track closely with the goals” of the George W. Bush administration, Brennan said Obama’s strategy “neither represents a wholesale overhaul, nor a wholesale retention, of previous policies.” He spoke in a speech unveiling Obama’s national strategy for counterterrorism.

Brennan said the administration recognizes that other groups and terrorist-supporting states, including Iran and Syria, threaten U.S. allies and interests abroad. He said the United States will continue to use “the full range of our foreign policy tools” to prevent those states from endangering U.S. national security.

“This is the first counterterrorism strategy that designates the homeland as a primary area of emphasis in our counterterrorism efforts,” Brennan said, speaking before an audience of students, diplomats and reporters at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Obama’s principal focus “is the network that poses the most direct and significant threat to the United States, and that is al-Qaeda, its affiliates and its adherents. We use these terms deliberately.”

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/brennan-counterterrorism-strategy-focused-on-al-qaedas-threat-to-homeland/2011/06/29/AGki1LrH_story.html

[provis99]

1. "Homeland". I hate that word.

Sounds Nazi-like.

[Nihil]

3. ITA. (n/t)

[Newest Reality]

2. Emmanuel Goldstein

Emmanuel Goldstein is a character in George Orwell's classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is the number one enemy of the people according to Big Brother and the Party, who heads a mysterious and possibly fictitious anti-party organization called The Brotherhood. Despite being a key part of the story, he is only actually seen and heard on telescreen, and may in fact be nothing more than a useful propaganda fabrication of the Ministry of Truth.

However, Goldstein's persona as an enemy of the state serves to distract, unite and focus the anger of the people of Oceania. Ostensibly, Goldstein serves an important role as both a convenient scapegoat for the totalitarian regime in 1984, and justifying reason for more military buildup, surveillance and elimination of civil liberties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Goldstein