The United States has tens of thousands of people searching for Al-qaeda. People sitting behind desks pouring over documents and photos, people listening to live communications or computer flagged communications, scouring the internet, on the ground doing interviews, military doing searches, satellites taking pictures, and the list goes on. It involves the military, FBI, CIA, NSA and an untold number of other three letter departments.

Since 9/11 Al-qaeda has been the focus of everything in the Middle East. Even things going on in Israel have taken a back seat to the “War on Terror”. Personally I think it’s a good thing. Al-qaeda and every other terror organization need to be held accountable. It doesn’t affect just the USA it affects everyone worldwide. So, the hunt is on, in and by countries all over the world. Despite differences that exist on the political front between countries, this is one thing that most of them have in common.

Listening to the news, reading the paper, checking out international news agencies, listening to the “experts”, reading military and government press releases it seems that Al-qaeda tends to be a hard animal to catch. You would think they were almost as hard to find as Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. Every day you hear they are hiding in the mountains, living in villages among the people, have camps that move around and it goes on. Ok it’s understandable that they would move around and hide. Wouldn’t you do the same if people were hunting you down to kill you?

The thing that amazes me though, is that we continue to see “special reports” from the news agencies. Their crack reporters on the ground seem to be able to find the Al-qaeda with relative ease, follow them around, talk to them and get some great footage. So how is it they can find them but the military has such a hard time?

The next obvious question is why aren’t reporters and news agencies passing this information on to the military? With the number of special reports I’ve seen I’d dare say the news has been everywhere with them. My biggest fear is that the news people are not telling the military in an effort to get that next big story to trump the other news agencies. Sadly, at the expense of US and other countries military personnel lives.

So maybe the military needs to re-evaluate how they are hunting the Al-qaeda. Instead of following and tracking them why don’t they start tracking the news people? Put tracking devices in the gear or on their bodies. Have the satellites and special forces track the reporters and news crews. I think they might be a little more successful.

They say that in the US if someone is missing don’t call the FBI or the Police, find a reporter and tell them the story. They can find just about anyone. Based on past news reports and big events in the world I’d dare day they are better and finding people and information than any intelligence agency in the world.