No Quick Victory Against Terror, U.S. Official Says

It will take decades to win the war against terrorism, the U.S. State Department’s top official in that battle said yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 15).

Department counterterrorism chief Hank Crumpton said the effort would “last a couple of decades, a generation — (or) longer — and we have got to think in those terms.”

“That’s sometimes hard for us to do but I have no doubt that’s what we are looking at,” Crumpton said while in Australia for meetings with counterterrorism experts there, The Australian reported.

The likelihood that terrorists would obtain plutonium or highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon is “not great, but a possibility,” Crumpton said.

“If there is one specific area of concern it would be Iran. Iran remains the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism,” he said (Patrick Walters, The Australian, Nov. 23).

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