Senator Blunt expects to get an intelligence briefing later this week on the killing of Osama bin Laden. And he says he won’t be able to repeat a lot of what he hears. Blunt is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee–and he says he doesn’t know much more than anybody else knows right now.
Although he calls it “a major victory for America,” he notes that al Quaida has been a disjointed movement for some time, and bin Laden’s role as a central leader had become secondary to other factors. He says bin Laden had been a figure “to rally around, a figure of Islamic resistance.” He says bin Laden’s ability to raise money and to use his own money to finance terrorism had remained strong.
Blunt says retaliation by al Quaida is possible…He says its members are trying to harm Americans and their allies all the time anyway.