It is particularly welcome, since the rest of the al-Qaeda leadership has so far proved elusive.
The destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, said Mr Bucherer, was a specific objective of the al-Qaeda leadership, whose purist Wahabi beliefs preach a worldwide Islamic government and the destruction of national symbols.
Mr Panetta's statement comes just over a week after a statement made in Islamabad by US special envoy Richard Holbrooke that the US intelligence community did not know where the al-Qaeda leadership was hiding.
"When we find somebody like this, this close to Bin Laden and the senior al-Qaeda leadership, the last thing in the world we want to do, in my opinion, is put them in a civilian court, " said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on Thursday.
Much of the Al-Qaeda senior leadership came from these same terror organizations.
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There is no question, as I've mentioned before, that the cooperation that we have had from Pakistan has contributed to some of the successes that we have had in taking the fight to al Qaeda, in eliminating senior al Qaeda leadership from -- removing senior al Qaeda leadership from the battlefield.
The BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says that both the US and Afghan governments have long believed that the entire al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership is hiding in one of the militant sanctuaries to be found Pakistan's tribal areas.
And I think that the broader record here of success in taking the fight to al Qaeda and eliminating al Qaeda leadership and leadership of al Qaeda-affiliated organizations is one that has made the United States safer.
Among the bombed-out ruins of his hideout, American forces found a letter from a man calling himself Atiyah who said he spoke on behalf of the whole of al-Qaeda's leadership.
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If I can, I think you have seen in areas dealing with each of the three aspects of the report -- the momentum with the -- stopping and stemming some of the momentum of the Taliban, increased cooperation with the Pakistanis, and the degradation of al Qaeda leadership -- progress on all three of those fronts, with challenges small and great that continue.
Belmokhtar fell out with the leadership of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) after the death of Osama Bin Laden and a struggle for dominance has been going on.
Indeed, to the extent that radical Islam grew stronger during this encounter, it was not the Sunni zealots of al-Qaeda who benefited but their rival pretenders to leadership of the Muslim world: notably the Shia leaders of Iran and, after the 33-day war with Israel in 2006, Iran's Hizbullah co-religionists in Lebanon.
Scheuer used to be head of the bin Laden unit at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center (which is different from the newer National Counterterrorism Center), and he says he thinks his successor is the person leading the day-to-day hunt for bin Laden and the rest of al Qaeda's leadership.
Following the U.S. Predator Drone strike in Damadola, Osama bin Laden and senior al-Qaeda leadership decided that Pakistan had to be pushed out of the tribal region to ensure their security.
And we're going to have to recognize that we have to do as the President has done -- I congratulate him on taking out Osama bin Laden and going after the leadership in al Qaeda.
Ask them if he can come down and watch a video put out by al Qaeda senior leadership like -- the names that we recognize -- Zawahiri.
And Iraqi forces have taken the fight to al Qaeda, removing much of its leadership in Iraqi-led operations.
In August 2007, Mr. Silber and Arvin Bhatt, then also an NYPD analyst, wrote what was then considered a controversial police-department report arguing that with the attrition of al Qaeda's leadership, the primary threat to New York would come from "homegrown" Muslims under the age of 35 who had become Islamists in the West.
It is certainly clear that, because of our efforts in the Af-Pak region, if you will -- which is the region covered by the overall strategy that the President put into place -- that we have aggressively pursued, with significant success, al Qaeda's leadership.
The U.S. National Counterterrorism Center's Web site says that after al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula emerged in January 2009, its leadership was composed of al-Raimi and the group's emir, Nasir al-Wahishi, both of them "veteran Yemeni extremist leaders, " as well as two Saudis, one of whom surrendered to Saudi authorities last year.
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