Al Qaeda threat to U.S. rebounds despite lull

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Six years after the September 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network is bleeding the U.S. military in Iraq while regrouping with an avowed aim of another strike on the United States.

U.S. intelligence agencies and other analysts say security improvements and international efforts against al Qaeda have helped prevent another major U.S. attack.

But the network's ability to attack the West is rebounding, they say, and already it has met what some analysts describe as a goal of luring the United States into a damaging Middle East war that would cripple U.S. influence in the region.

Al Qaeda has inspired cells and sympathizers who may be unable to strike on the scale of September 11 but can nevertheless cause death and destruction.

"They have regained a significant level of their capability," National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell said of al Qaeda during a Senate hearing on Monday, the eve of the sixth anniversary. "The threat is real," he said.

Bin Laden last week issued a video saying the United States was vulnerable and Americans must embrace Islam to avert war.

Security analysts said the message could be a call for new attacks. White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend rejected that view and called bin Laden "virtually impotent."

Bin Laden escaped a U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks, and U.S. intelligence agencies believe al Qaeda has rebuilt around the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

It has a new safe haven and "middle management" that can organize and train, McConnell and other officials told Congress. Its ranks are thinner and territory smaller than before September 11, but it has stepped up recruiting, especially in Europe, they said.

U.S. President George W. Bush, who said after the September 11 attacks he wanted bin Laden dead or alive, shifted his focus to Iraq and cast it as a central front against terrorism.

TAKING THE BAIT

That shift may have played into bin Laden's hands.

"Part of what bin Laden's strategy is, is to bait us into situations where we bleed ... We took the bait," said security analyst P.J. Crowley of the Center for American Progress.

The Iraq war made it easier for al Qaeda to kill Americans, through its al Qaeda in Iraq affiliate, said Mike German, a former FBI counterterrorism agent who is now a policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.

The war also created a rallying cry at a time bin Laden was crippled by the loss of his Afghan sanctuary.