Taking On Al-Qaeda

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By Fawaz A. Gerges,

a professor of international affairs and Middle Eastern studies at Sarah Lawrence College and the author of "Journey of the Jihadist"
Tuesday, June 17, 2008

LEADERLESS JIHAD

Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century

By Marc Sageman

Univ. of Pennsylvania. 200 pp. $24.95

THE CONFRONTATION

Winning the War Against Future Jihad

By Walid Phares

Palgrave Macmillan. 296 pp. $24.95

Al-Qaeda is synonymous with Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The war in Iraq inflicted a strategic defeat on al-Qaeda, as President Bush stated on the fifth anniversary of the invasion.

Bin Laden and Zawahiri are in command of a new generation of radicals born after the Iraq invasion.

Al-Qaeda possesses sleeper cells in the United States and remains a major threat to the American homeland.