THEY HAVE TO BE LUCKY EVERY DAY...:

Israel captures Hamas commander (BBC, 5/23/06)
Israeli forces have captured the leader of Islamic group Hamas' military wing in the West Bank in a raid in Ramallah.

Israel accuses Ibrahim Hamad, 41, of masterminding a string of suicide bombings, including attacks on cafes and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
'Zarqawi aide' captured in Jordan (BBC, 5/23/06)

Jordanian officials say they have arrested a senior al-Qaeda figure heavily involved in Iraq's insurgency.

Security officials in Jordan's capital, Amman, refused to identify the man, said to be a key aide to Iraq's most wanted militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

...we only have to get lucky once.

MORE:
Architect of New War on the West: Writings Lay Out Post-9/11 Strategy of Isolated Cells Joined in Jihad (Craig Whitlock, 5/23/06, Washington Post)

From secret hideouts in South Asia, the Spanish-Syrian al-Qaeda strategist published thousands of pages of Internet tracts on how small teams of Islamic extremists could wage a decentralized global war against the United States and its allies.

With the Afghanistan base lost, he argued, radicals would need to shift their approach and work primarily on their own, though sometimes with guidance from roving operatives acting on behalf of the broader movement.

Last October, the writing career of Mustafa Setmariam Nasar came to an abrupt end when Pakistani agents seized him in a friend's house in the border city of Quetta and turned him over to U.S. intelligence operatives, according to two senior Pakistani intelligence officials. [...]

Counterterrorism officials and analysts see Nasar's theories in action in major terrorist attacks in Casablanca in 2003, Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005. In each case, the perpetrators organized themselves into local, self-sustaining cells that acted on their own but also likely accepted guidance from visiting emissaries of the global movement. [...]

"The enemy is strong and powerful, we are weak and poor, the war duration is going to be long and the best way to fight it is in a revolutionary jihad way for the sake of Allah," he said in one paper. "The preparations better be deliberate, comprehensive and properly planned, taking into account past experiences and lessons."

Intelligence officials said Nasar's doctrine has made waves in radical Islamic chat rooms and on Web sites about jihad -- holy war or struggle -- over the past two years. His capture, they added, has only added to his mystique.

"He is probably the first to spell out a doctrine for a decentralized global jihad," said Brynjar Lia, a senior counterterrorism researcher at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, who is writing a book on Nasar. "In my humble opinion, he is the best theoretician among the jihadi ideologues and strategists out there. Nobody is as systematic and comprehensive in their analysis as he is. His brutal honesty and self-criticism is unique in jihadi circles."

War? Random acts of violence by folks who can't afford to be identified or to communicate do not a war make.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 23, 2006 8:10 AM