I think we may have missed the opportunity to comment on the central theme, which is that US-Israeli cooperation plays into the hands of the Salafists and Takfiri in the world -- count UBL, AMZ, EIJ, IG, etc -- with dry kindling. Do I think there is a conspiracy by the state of Israei -- no; Does US support of Israel have political consequences -- especially vis-a-vis the terrorist threat -- definitely yes. Regardless of how we justify our overseas policies, especially in the ME, those policies are still viewed largely as pro-Israeli by a great number Arabs, which is then translated as being anti-Palestenian, Arab, Islam, etc... Do we shuck Israel to avoid the threat of terrorists like Binni, no, but we can probably can do more to expedite an Israeli-Palestenian solution, which would eventually remove an anti-US catalyst from a volatile region.

What Americans view as bin Laden's megalomania -- the conviction that he and a relatively small band of followers can defeat a superpower -- has its origins in the humbling of the Soviet superpower in the mountains of Afghanistan. In a CNN interview in 1997, he said that "the myth of the superpower was destroyed not only in my mind but also in the minds of all Muslims" as a result of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of mujaheddin. Bin Laden's contempt for America seems even greater than his contempt for the Soviet Union. "The Russian soldier is more courageous and patient than the U.S. soldier," he told the London-based Arab newspaper, al-Quds al-Arabi, in 1996. "Our battle with the United States is easy compared with the battles in which we engaged in Afghanistan." As examples of alleged American cowardice, bin Laden frequently cites the case of the withdrawal from Lebanon after the 1983 truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut and the withdrawal from Somalia after the 1993 killings of U.S. servicemen in Mogadishu. Bin Laden also has paid a great deal of attention to the symbolism of his targets. In a video that circulated widely in the Arab world earlier this year, he bragged of the attack on the USS Cole by a boat filled with explosives in Aden harbor in October 2000. The destroyer had the "illusion she could destroy anything," but was itself destroyed by a tiny boat, bin Laden said. "The destroyer represented the West, and the small boat represented Muhammad," he boasted, according to a transcript of the videotape supplied by Peter Bergen, author of "Holy War Inc.," a forthcoming book about bin Laden.