There's a fascinating story in the New York Times about the source of the information on the new terror threat to American financial centers. Some excerpts:
The unannounced capture of a figure from Al Qaeda in Pakistan several weeks ago led the Central Intelligence Agency to the rich lode of information that prompted the terror alert on Sunday, according to senior American officials.
One senior American intelligence official said the information was more detailed and precise than any he had seen during his 24-year career in intelligence work. A second senior American official said it had provided a new window into the methods, content and distribution of Qaeda communications.
"This, for us, is a potential treasure trove," said a third senior American official, an intelligence expert, at a briefing for reporters on Sunday afternoon.
The documentary evidence, whose contents were reported urgently to Washington on Friday afternoon, immediately elevated the significance of other intelligence information gathered in recent weeks that had already been regarded as highly troubling, senior American intelligence officials said.
The American officials said the new evidence had been obtained only after the capture of the Qaeda figure. Among other things, they said, it demonstrated that Qaeda plotters had begun casing the buildings in New York, Newark and Washington even before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Among the questions the plotters sought to answer, senior American intelligence officials said, were how best to gain access to the targeted buildings; how many people might be at the sites at different hours and on different days of the week; whether a hijacked oil tanker truck could serve as an effective weapon; and how large an explosive device might be required to bring the buildings down.
One of the things Americans need to keep firmly in mind is that this war has, in the minds of the jihadis, been going on for seven centuries. They're not going to surrender, nor are they going to stop attacking us any time soon. We need to unburden ourselves of our traditional notion of fighting a war for a distinct period of time and then enjoying peace for a generation thereafter. This war will not end until either Western civilization is destroyed or the Islamists are rendered impotent. Even if we critically degrade their ability to strike us, there will only be a temporary cessation of hostilities until they can regain enough strength to attack us again.
The Islamists are fanatics obsessed with killing Christians and Jews. There is no remedy for this. It's not a matter of reasoning with them or negotiating with them. It's not a matter of restoring land or improving economic conditions. It's not a matter of leaving them alone. They believe it is Allah's will that they kill all infidels. The only way to stop them, unfortunately, is to kill them first.
