Gates: Bin Laden's Death Could Help Afghan Mission

Politico reports:

In his first public comments since the killing of Osama bin Laden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that the leader’s death could benefit U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.

“Frankly, I think it’s too early to make a judgment in terms of the impact inside Afghanistan, but I think in six months or so, we’ll know if it’s made a difference,” Gates said Friday morning at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina.

Gates sketched out a schism between the post-bin Laden Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the extremist group that harbored Al Qaeda and was chased from the government after the U.S. invaded in 2001.

“We’ll have to see what that relationship looks like,” Gates said. “Bin Laden and (Taliban leader) Mullah Omar had a very close personal relationship. There are others in the Taliban that felt betrayed by al-Qaeda — that it was because of al-Qaeda’s attack on the United States that the Taliban got thrown out of Afghanistan.”