This from <$NoAd$> tomorrow’s Post …
The Bush administration has launched a high-level internal review of its efforts to battle international terrorism, aimed at moving away from a policy that has stressed efforts to capture and kill al Qaeda leaders since Sept. 11, 2001, and toward what a senior official called a broader “strategy against violent extremism.”
…
Much of the discussion has focused on how to deal with the rise of a new generation of terrorists, schooled in Iraq over the past couple years. Top government officials are increasingly turning their attention to anticipate what one called “the bleed out” of hundreds or thousands of Iraq-trained jihadists back to their home countries throughout the Middle East and Western Europe. “It’s a new piece of a new equation,” a former senior Bush administration official said. “If you don’t know who they are in Iraq, how are you going to locate them in Istanbul or London?”
Much of what we call al Qaida — not just al Qaida proper which is at least a somewhat specific entity or association of radical Islamist groups, but the broader movement of violent and extremist jihadism across much of the globe — was the spawn of the cockpit of brutality and extremism that was the Afghan jihad of the 1980s.
What will this lead to? What will these guys do?
Would take your breath away if you had any left to take.
(ed.note: Note of thanks to TPM Reader BKS.)
