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I know a lot of folks around here adamantly disagree with this, but I believe Bin Laden is dead and has been for nearly seven years.

I have no idea if he is dead or alive, and I am not sure it makes that much difference. Al Qaida was initially an Afgan and Arab group, but now it has spread throughout the Islamic world. It is not clear that there is a central head, but rather a group of empowered cells. My real concern is that they have spread to East Africa, especially in Somalia. We have numerous East African populations in the US that probably contain many sleeper cells. Without a central head calling the shots, it makes it much more difficult to detect (through chatter) when these cells may decide to become "active".

I have no idea if he is dead or alive, and I am not sure it makes that much difference.

I completely agree. OBL was more or less a figurehead and his real value was as a rainmaker. I'd rather have KSM or even Ayman al-Zawahiri, as far as making any kind of significant dent in that org.

My real concern is that they have spread to East Africa, especially in Somalia. We have numerous East African populations in the US that probably contain many sleeper cells.

Exactly.
Without getting into exactly what I do, there's tens of thousands of Somalians in this country as "asylees" "living in fear for their safety if they went back to Somalia". Routinely, they spend 9 months a year in "Dijibouti", definitely never crossing into Somalia to work with, train, and fund Islamic Courts and al Shabab.

The State Department, the fifth column of the U.S. Government.

Owl_Eagle

“When the stock market crashed,
Franklin Roosevelt got on the television
and didn’t just talk about
the princes of greed, he said,
‘Look, here’s what happened.’"
-Slow Joe Biden

I have no idea if he is dead or alive, and I am not sure it makes that much difference. Al Qaida was initially an Afgan and Arab group, but now it has spread throughout the Islamic world. It is not clear that there is a central head, but rather a group of empowered cells.

It is a mistake to consider al Qaeda to be any sort of "command and control" operation. Rather, think of them as a Venture Capital firm which nurtures jihad cells.

The role of Osama was not to be a commander as much as a trusted conduit between wealthy Middle Eastern money men (see Golden Chain) and the actual jihadis. Al-Qaeda provided funding and training to groups that showed promise of successfully mounting operations.

Osama is very replaceable. The money men just recruit another cutout to stand between them and the jihadis and maintain deniability.