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ROFL !

1) Al-Qa’eda: If the war on terror is, as the has-been senators contend, ‘almost forgotten’, it’s because al-Qa’eda have been unable to pull off any attacks on Western soil in a year and a half. That’s a longer period of calm than Britain managed in its three-decade struggle against the IRA. As we know from the ricin plotters, that low body-count is not for lack of effort on the Islamonutters’ part. But they’ve been able to hit Westerners only in less rigorously policed jurisdictions like Tunisia and Bali, and now the Philippines. So, in any objective sense, America’s war on terror is not being ‘seriously neglected’ but rather impressively prosecuted.

The best evidence for this is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed himself. KSM is known in al-Qa’eda circles as ‘The Brain’, and his picture on the FBI ‘Most Wanted’ list shows a cold but dapper fellow with a trim beard — like the Westernised Arab academics who play the talkshow circuit or, indeed, an assistant choreographer on a Broadway revival. By contrast, the fellow seized in Rawalpindi is a wreck — haggard, bleary, unshaven, a loser who’s run out of everything except back hair. Asked to account for the stark difference in appearance, several experts pointed out that he’s a ‘master of disguise’. In that case, the master of disguise is doing a great job of convincingly passing himself off as a guy who’s been sleeping in a hedge for a month. The state of KSM provides a glimpse of the career options available to top al-Qa’eda honchos: either, like bin Laden, you go into deep cover as a few specks of DNA discreetly sprinkled in the rubble of Tora Bora, or, like ‘The Brain’, you’ve a choice between hunkering down in a ‘safe house’ or staying on the move, never knowing, even when you’re motoring through the emptiness of the Yemeni desert, if some unmanned CIA Predator will drop the big one on you. Of course, many al-Qa’eda operatives are hoping to be on a fast track to martyrdom and the 72 virgins. But you gotta have a couple of guys who stay alive long enough to instruct the neophytes in how to kill themselves, and right now al-Qa’eda’s management structure is looking severely hobbled.

The state of KSM provides a glimpse of the career options available to top al-Qa’eda honchos: either, like bin Laden, you go into deep cover as a few specks of DNA discreetly sprinkled in the rubble of Tora Bora, or, like ‘The Brain’, you’ve a choice between hunkering down in a ‘safe house’ or staying on the move, never knowing, even when you’re motoring through the emptiness of the Yemeni desert, if some unmanned CIA Predator will drop the big one on you. Of course, many al-Qa’eda operatives are hoping to be on a fast track to martyrdom and the 72 virgins. But you gotta have a couple of guys who stay alive long enough to instruct the neophytes in how to kill themselves, and right now al-Qa’eda’s management structure is looking severely hobbled.

Well said. Cogent analysis.