Meanwhile, back at the real war…

As the US and the UK struggle to impose order on a shattered Iraq, the New York Times reports that “U.S. Officials See Signs of a Revived Al Qaeda”. And, right on cue, suicide bombers kill 41 people in Casablanca. “Leaders and operatives of Al Qaeda”, says the Times, “have reorganized bases of operations in at least a half-dozen locations, including Kenya, Sudan, Pakistan and Chechnya…

The leaders have begun to recruit new members, train the new followers and plan new attacks on Western targets in earnest, according to senior counterterrorism officials in Washington, Europe and the Middle East. As evidence of this, senior government officials pointed to the secret arrests in the United States in the last two months of two Arab men suspected of having been sent by senior leaders of Al Qaeda to scout targets for new terror attacks.

The two recently apprehended men, whom the officials would not identify, were said to be conducting “presurveillance” activities. They were part of a larger group of about six Qaeda followers arrested in recent months whose presence in the United States has led the authorities to conclude that the terrorist group remains determined to carry out attacks on American soil, officials said.”