KUDOS GIVEN TO PRESIDENT BUSH, ENCOURAGEMENT TO OBAMA

Obama seen making more aggressive effort on terror

By ROBERT BURNS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama apparently plans a more aggressive approach than the Bush administration to helping friendly nations get better at fighting terrorism within their own borders, the State Department's top counterterrorism official said Tuesday.

Dell L. Dailey, who has led the counterterrorism office at State since June 2007, told reporters that he is encouraged by what he has seen and heard in multiple meetings with Obama's transition team.

"We do see the Obama administration being much, much more aggressive than maybe even their campaign actions indicated," Dailey said, stressing that he was referring to wider and deeper U.S. engagement with other countries to counter terrorist threats rather than unilateral U.S. military action.

Dailey also said Bush administration efforts to undermine Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network have paid dividends, leaving the organization's leaders isolated and diminished, if still able to avoid U.S. capture.

"We chopped off their arms in doing that, we chopped off their communications, we chopped off their funding to do that, we've gone after their leadership and curtailed them in taking away training sites," he said.

Referring specifically to bin Laden, Dailey said, "We've kind of neutralized him now — him and the organization."

"Al-Qaida has been beaten back into a smaller hole," he said, and the Obama administration needs to keep up the pressure...

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