Newsweek has a fascinating profile of the malfunctioning of an overly complicated plot by Al Qaeda to blow up a U.S. warship on September 11. I’m convinced that these guys would be much more effective at spreading fear and chaos and economic disruption if they weren’t so ambitious — but then, that assumes that they really do, as advertised, have thousands of operatives. Their disinterest in staging a large-scale campaign of the type of attacks that we see in Israel suggests that they are much shorter on manpower than we think.