excerpt from stratfor.com

[telebob x]

Just thought I would send along a short section from some of the analysis 
done by Austin's Stratfor.com.  These guys are pretty good, and you should 
check them out.

Telebob

www.stratfor.com
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Tactically, this war is an asymmetric nightmare. Groups and individuals 
involved in al-Qa'ida are present in some 60 countries, but active 
combatants number perhaps only in the tens of thousands. The militants' wide 
dispersal and minimal physical infrastructure limits available targets for 
U.S. attacks and minimizes the amount of overall degradation to the 
organization the United States can inflict. Available targets are rarely 
appropriate for the U.S. military's preferred weapons and tactics, and each 
strike requires the deployment of massive amounts of political and military 
resources.

In turn, al-Qa'ida's tactics, deployment and nature make further attacks 
inevitable but extremely difficult to predict or defend against. al-Qa'ida 
is a collection of autonomous groups, which in turn operate in autonomous 
cells, which are already deployed in target countries spanning the globe. It 
is an organization capable of mustering 19 suicide attackers for a single 
coordinated operation and simultaneously bombing targets in multiple 
countries. Al-Qa'ida has demonstrated its capability for tremendous 
operational secrecy, and it has carried out effective disinformation and 
psychological warfare campaigns. Its unconventional, small-unit actions can 
cause disproportionate damage while exposing only a small portion of the 
group to retaliation.

Al-Qa'ida appears to be developing a new strategy that transcends terrorism. 
Terrorism is a simple tactic that aims to frighten a population into forcing 
its government to abandon or alter a policy. It is a psychological 
technique, and it is difficult to find a case in which that technique has 
worked. The World Trade Center and Pentagon are symbolic targets, good for 
terrorist tactics, but they had tangible value as well.

Intentionally or inadvertently, however, the attacks on Washington and New 
York caused substantial damage to the U.S. financial and transportation 
infrastructures. They shut down air transport for days and disrupted it for 
weeks. They closed and then battered the U.S. stock market. The economic 
effects of the attacks will last well into next year.

Al-Qa'ida may have taken to heart the conventional warfare experience of its 
affiliated groups on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Chechnya. This 
could have spilled over into the group's strategic planning. But if the 
attackers did not plan this outcome, they are now well aware of such 
potential. Infrastructure attacks will feature prominently in the future.

Targeting al-Qa'ida is a strategic nightmare as well. The organization is 
not a monolith, single-mindedly targeting the United States out of blind 
hatred. It comprises groups involved in a number of longstanding and complex 
regional disputes. To target al-Qa'ida is to take on such intractable 
struggles as Kashmir, Chechnya, Mindanao and Israel. Each of these conflicts 
is more than the governments involved have been able to solve. The United 
States now seeks to confront them all.

The wide dispersal of al-Qa'ida and its supporters makes any attempt to 
fight it extremely costly. The United States will need assistance in 
intelligence-gathering. It will need bases and access. It will need help 
from the banking and legal sectors of dozens of countries. And it will need 
political support. This marks a major reversal from the first half of this 
year, when the United States pushed ahead unilaterally with controversial 
policies that drew the ire of friend and foe.

The rest of the world is well aware the United States now needs assistance, 
and it is already drawing up the bill. It will not be cheap, nor will it be 
simple to pay.



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