Taking On Al-Qaeda

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.