{"id":695902,"date":"2010-03-19T13:20:58","date_gmt":"2010-03-19T17:20:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=79761"},"modified":"2010-03-19T13:20:58","modified_gmt":"2010-03-19T17:20:58","slug":"al-qaeda%e2%80%99s-ambitions-diminish-further","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/695902","title":{"rendered":"Al-Qaeda\u2019s Ambitions Diminish Further?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I snarked<\/a> Wednesday about CIA Director Leon Panetta’s assertion that the CIA has lately dealt al-Qaeda a hefty blow, since we don’t really have the visibility into that process to independently evaluate the claim. But the Los Angeles Times’ Greg Miller has a great piece<\/a> about how U.S. intelligence believes al-Qaeda is switching its signature tactical approach away from massive, simultaneous media-spectacle-ready attacks to something, well, smaller:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Al Qaeda and its affiliates have adapted their tactics to emphasize speed and probability of success over spectacle, U.S. intelligence officials believe, a shift in strategy that poses problems for spy agencies that were reorganized in recent years to stop large-scale attacks like those of Sept. 11, 2001.<\/p>\n

The new emphasis is seen as a significant departure for a terrorist network that had focused on sophisticated plots involving synchronized strikes on multiple targets, and teams of operatives coordinating across international borders.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If that’s a problem for spy agencies, it’s one of those good<\/em> problems. Al-Qaeda would not lower its ambitions away from Huge and Simultaneous and Redundant if it had a choice in the matter. If Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is the future — and remember, he came from al-Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate, not the central, Pakistan core that has previously directed U.S.-focused attacks, an indication of pressure on the senior leadership — well, the guy didn’t even detonate correctly. Even if he had, he would have been a vicious murderer of 300 people, an order of magnitude fewer than those al-Qaeda murdered on 9\/11. Compare this to worries from years ago about al-Qaeda obtaining weapons of mass destruction and we have a real measure of progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I snarked Wednesday about CIA Director Leon Panetta’s assertion that the CIA has lately dealt al-Qaeda a hefty blow, since we don’t really have the visibility into that process to independently evaluate the claim. But the Los Angeles Times’ Greg Miller has a great piece about how U.S. intelligence believes al-Qaeda is switching its signature […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2762,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-695902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2V2e","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2762"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}