Al Qaeda's "best and brightest"

CNN:

At least some of the suspects held over the attempted terrorist attacks on London and Glasgow were recruited by al Qaeda while they were living in the Middle East, U.S. officials say.

Six people were still being questioned on Wednesday at a London police station. A seventh man remains critically ill with severe burns in a Glasgow hospital and an eighth, Dr. Mohammed Haneef, 27, is being questioned in Brisbane, Australia.

Al Qaeda has been trying to recruit people who can travel easily to the United States and Europe and assimilate into society without causing suspicion, according to law enforcement officials.

Counterterrorism officials told CNN they believed the plots in Britain may be a blueprint for al Qaeda attacks on the United States. But, the officials say, the degree of what might be in the works and timing of any potential attack remain unknown.

"Some wonder why they just don't do vehicle bombs here. It would certainly cause panic and terror, and soft targets do exist here in abundance. But I continue to think they don't want to waste their shot here on something that isn't fairly spectacular," one counterterrorism official said.

"There's a strong conviction we are vulnerable here," another official said. "They are planning and trying to put something together, and given that these are people who play by no rules, are willing to die -- it doesn't matter how much we harden targets, they will still find some way to get through."

"The next attack here is likely to focus on some sort of infrastructure," a third counterterrorism official said.

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Counterterrorism officials note doctors' expertise in biology and chemistry and have access to radiological material such as medical isotopes, could be used in terrorist acts.

According to officials, there has been long-standing concern that Iraq is a breeding ground for a new generation of terrorists who have been testing tactics of urban warfare, which can then be used in Western nations.

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If Iraq is a breeding ground for these guys, we should stay there for a long time. If this is the best and the brightest of al Qaeda, we are doing very good indeed, in the war against the Islamic religious bigots. There efforts at mass murder would not make much of a plot for Jack Bauer to deal with. What we should take from this episode is that al Qaeda has a pretty weak bench and the attrition of its middle managers has effected its ability to operate on the scale its ambitions dictate.

Iraq has proved to be a poor training ground for the terrorist who survive it. They have no sanctuary in which to drill and train as they did in Afghanistan and they suffer continuing attrition of both their troops and their managers. This attack may have been one of Zarqawi's fantasies and may have been prompted by Zawahiri to take pressure off of their forces in Iraq and Afghanistan but it has instead shown how weak that organization has become because of our military efforts.

The anti war left and many on the media have been promoting the Iraq as Jihad U theme as a reason to leave, but it turns out is is just the opposite. If we left and gave them sanctuary, they might have time and space to get one of these attacks right.

The reasons these otherwise intelligent terrorist failed are myriad, but one of the most important is that they did not have access to the types of explosives and detonators needed to pull off a car bomb plot. We have done a pretty good job of controlling substances that can be used for mass murder outside of Iraq.