Oh, yeah, al-Qaeda and terrorism and stuff

Yet more evidence that the duplicity, dishonesty and cynicism of the Nixon administration was the "good ole days" compared to what we have now: Review May Shift Terror Policies: U.S. Is Expected to Look Beyond Al Qaeda by Susan B. Glasser Washington Post 05/29/05

The Bush administration has launched a high-level internal review of its efforts to battle international terrorism, aimed at moving away from a policy that has stressed efforts to capture and kill al Qaeda leaders since Sept. 11, 2001, and toward what a senior official called a broader "strategy against violent extremism." ...

"They recognize there's been a vacuum of leadership," said a former top counterterrorism official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. "There has been a dearth of senior leadership directing this day to day. No one knows who's running this on a day-to-day basis." ["This" being the administration's counterterrorism effort. - Bruce]

Until recently, the Bush administration resisted any broadening of its mission against al Qaeda, insisting on what Townsend once called a "decapitation" strategy. The policy review marks what many experts regard as a belated shift. "The administration has appropriately taken the broad view," said an intelligence official who had urged the review. "It's not going to be a matter of just trying to roll up more al Qaeda guys. What we still know as the al Qaeda organization -- they've taken a terrible beating."

But even that notion remains controversial when assessing the continuing threat from al Qaeda will shape the policy against it. "I just don't accept the idea that the whole organization is completely gone and morphed into an amorphous global jihad movement," said Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism analyst at the Congressional Research Service. "They could still try to reconstitute the centralized structure of before 9/11."

Is this latest report a sign of a new focus?  Or some new way to operate on the assumption that the "war on terrorism" has been won?