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Someone is coordinating al-Qaeda worldwide, so at the very least a solid chunk of the Shura Majlis remains intact.

Nobody is coordinating al-Qaeda. Nobody was ever coordinating al-Qaeda. You have a total fantasy image of what al-Qaeda is. It ain't no IBM, whatever they would like you to think.

Here's a metaphor to help you understand. Remember this picture? It was in all the papers.

There were lots of stories about this amazing James Bond hideout. Guess what? It was a total fantasy. It never existed. As someone here put it, they did get one bit of the picture right -- that fellow on horseback in the bottom left. Apart from that, it was complete BS.

Al-Qaeda is a recruiting outfit that makes videos. Osama bin Laden was a Saudi millionaire who liked to star himself as a messiah figure in his own videos, before he kicked the bucket at Tora Bora last December. He was a sort of arabic Ziggy Stardust, and he's played his final concert. The "shock troops" of al-Qaeda are morons like the Shoe Bomber and that limo driver who shot up the El Al ticket desk at LAX. Every now and then, some of these morons score a gig with somebody competent, like Saddam Hussein, and then they can do some real damage. But al-Qaeda? It's a myth. It's just a bunch of wankers with towels on their heads. That's all.

Hahhahah

DISH towels, at that.

That kind of attitude will get you killed in Kinshasa or Bali. Al Qaeda is a myth? More like a movement.

"Nobody is coordinating al-Qaeda. Nobody was ever coordinating al-Qaeda. You have a total fantasy image of what al-Qaeda is. It ain't no IBM, whatever they would like you to think."

Uh-huh.

Gee, that's funny, cause if you read the Southeast Asian press, you can learn all about how there's a very clear chain of command between the cell that carried out the Bali bombings, the Indonesian leadership of Jemaah Islamiyyah, and the al-Qaeda commander for Southeast Asia.

Somebody does the recruiting, produces the videotapes, buys the guns, explosives, and (evidently) missiles, manages the WMD research, has contacts with rogue states, indoctrinates the suicide bombers, runs the training camps outside of Afghanistan, manages the cash, ad infinitum.

If you sincerely believe that there is no central hierarchy behind al-Qaeda after everything that's widely known to date ... I honestly don't know what to say. Just look at the way their shock troops operate in the Caucasus, the Balkans, North Africa, Southeast Asia, North and East Africa, ect. I wouldn't say that they're as bad as the Comintern, but they aren't exactly living in the Stone Age (though that's where they'd like to return most of the planet to).

Your description of Tora Bora is also somewhat inaccurate. No, it wasn't the fortress of some James Bond villain with huge TVs and a holographic map of the world, but the place held out for around two weeks against some of the heaviest bombing since World War 2. That says quite a lot for the place as an operational headquarters and basically puts to lie your triumphalist rhetoric about al-Qaeda being completely overblown.

"The 'shock troops' of al-Qaeda are morons like the Shoe Bomber and that limo driver who shot up the El Al ticket desk at LAX."

First of all, from what I can understand Richard Reid's attack was mainly a quick run with their new toys, and as such he was the suicide bomber who was best in a position to act at the time. Hesham Mohammed Hadayet's July 4 attack was thwarted only because El Al security is so good, not because he wasn't planning on killing large numbers of people. If he had opened up at the American Airlines ticket counter instead, there would have been 10-15 people dead in a couple of minutes and the FBI wouldn't be debating about whether or not it was terrorism.

"Every now and then, some of these morons score a gig with somebody competent, like Saddam Hussein, and then they can do some real damage."

Uh-huh. Tell that to the Russians, Algerians, Filippinos, Christian Sudanese, Indians, East Timorese, and Serbs, all of whom have had their nations savaged by these fanatics. So do you belong to the "Al-Qaeda is a pawn of Iraq" school of thought?

"But al-Qaeda? It's a myth. It's just a bunch of wankers with towels on their heads. That's all."

So al-Qaeda is a worthless organization (or is it an organization, you don't really say), but they can still come up with a tape good enough to fool every intelligence agency on the planet until a private Swiss researcher can prove 'em wrong? I don't exactly think that you're arguing for logical consistency here, but okay ...

While I don't over-estimate the threat of al-Qaeda, I don't under-estimate it either. 19 of these towel-headed wankers haved killed over 3,000 Americans and God knows how many other innocent people ever since 9/11. And at this point, under-estimating them (which, if you read Mark Riebling, is exactly what the FBI is currently doing) is just as bad as over-blowing the threat.

Within the past couple of weeks, Sec. Rumsfeld was asked if bin Laden was dead or alive. He simply replied "no" implying he had no opinion one way or the other. The American public is inundated with polls and questions asking "Is bin Laden dead or alive?" For heavens sake, I live in Boonieville, Alabama, how would I be privy to that information. With all due respect, how can you state unequivocally that bin Laden is dead?