He said more precise information about the group and its makeup would probably not be available until American and allied troops captured or killed many of its members.
Mr. Panetta compared the difficulty of making intelligence judgments to forecasting earthquakes: even mapping the fault lines cannot give you precise information about the next earthquake.
"I am not able to give you precise information about the identitiy of the people who have died," he told reporters.
Health and local authorities need precise information about the extent of the problem, and professionals and clinicians need actively to identify affected children and young people in order to provide adequate services.
Michel said that the decision to lock down this city of more than a million inhabitants was "based on quite precise information about the risk of an attack like the one that happened in Paris".
And unless we had precise information about the location of all of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and materials, we could not rely on bombing or using Special Forces to destroy them.
"[We] are asking for precise information about the work done to estimate the costs of different scenarios in relation to the closure of the Sheffield office and transfer of posts to London.
It provides unprecedented, precise information about the interfacial electronic structure.
However, our approach does not need precise information about the nodes' positions.
Moreover, it is extremely difficult to obtained precise information about the mode of transport used.
The estimated PSD provides some precise information about the structure of the stochastic process.
