WASHINGTON, June 7 (UPI) -- The U.S. military may concentrate on eliminating midlevel al-Qaida operators who help the terrorist group's leaders to function, The Washington Times reported.
The strategy change under consideration at the Pentagon would also seek to discourage the al-Qaida operators from giving support to the leadership, the Times said Tuesday.
The report said Bush administration policymakers believe the only way to ultimately win the war against Islamist terrorists is to take down the lower-level operators who form the networks that support Osama bin Laden and scores of his al-Qaida lieutenants around the world.
"(The Department of Defense) is pushing a strategy of going after the al-Qaida network," an administration official told the Times. "Getting the leadership alone is not going to do it." The official said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is "putting pressure on the system" to come up with new ideas, but has not endorsed a new plan.
Another change being discussed is a strategy that stresses that the war is against Islamic extremism, not Islam itself.
