DTN News - DEFENSE NEWS: Panetta~ U.S. Military Best In World, But Threats Remain
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 21, 2012: The U.S. military is the world’s best and it’s on the right path to face the challenges ahead, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said here today.
Speaking to a crowd of service members, civilians and local leaders at a town hall meeting, Panetta said the military “has to be able to make that turn as we head into the future.”
“We're at a point, as you know, where the Iraq mission was brought to an end, and it's now clearly up to the Iraqi people, to the Iraqi leaders to make sure they stay on the right track,” he said. “That was the whole point of the mission, was to make Iraq be able to govern and secure itself.”
The defense secretary also cited U.S., coalition and Afghan progress made in Afghanistan and NATO’s success in helping to topple a dictator in Libya.
“In Afghanistan, we are making good progress there in transitioning to Afghan control and security, and we remain committed to making sure that happens,” Panetta said. “In Libya, we had a successful NATO mission that helped bring down Gadhafi and return Libya to the Libyan people.”
Panetta noted the U.S. military has “significantly impacted” al-Qaida operations. Al-Qaida chieftain Osama bin Laden was killed in May 2011 in Pakistan by U.S. troops.
“Its leadership is decimated,” Panetta said of al-Qaida. “It doesn't have the ability to put command and control together to make the kind of plans for the kind of attacks we saw on 9/11.
“We have successfully gone after their leadership, and it's not just bin Laden, but a number of leaders,” he continued. “But we need to continue that pressure.
“We need to keep going after them wherever they go, whether it's Yemen or Somalia or North Africa,” he added. “We need to continue the pressure on them. But we are working to significantly weaken their capability. We've been good at it.”
The defense secretary noted that “we’re moving in the right direction” by virtue of the men and women in uniform doing “everything we've asked them to do.”
Panetta also said the current drawdown isn’t like previous drawdowns following World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War or the collapse of the Soviet Union.
