The Wall Street Journal published a troubling editorial last Friday entitled, "The Meaning of al Qaeda's Double Agent."
I don't focus very much on this topic. I suppose, like many Americans, I've viewed the ongoing conflict of the past decade, and then some, between Muslim extremists and America, as a religious war of terror.
What this article brought home is how much more sophisticated our enemy has become at using skillful, deeply covert counterintelligence capabilities to parry US thrusts.
For example, the editorial opines on how effective al Qaeda was at managing to infiltrate a lone suicide bomber into the heart of a forward CIA operating base in Afghanistan, killing a substantial number of seasoned CIA personnel.
That those CIA operatives didn't seriously consider this threat even remotely possible is unsettling. Apparently, they didn't even ascribe such skill and motivations to our enemy.
Thus, in addition to focusing on the more conventional battelfield developments in Afghanistan and Iraq, we need to be more aware of how our intelligence services are doing in the shadowy battle behind those fronts.
Right now, it doesn't look good.
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