Al-Qaeda is a shadow of its self...

Youssef Ibrahim shows how Al-Qaeda isn't what it used to be....

One wonders what it is the second in command of Al Qaeda, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, is smoking in his cave nowadays.

In a surreal videotape released last week, the Egyptian doctor turned assassin trotted out an American convert to jihad whom he called "Azzam the American." Azzam came on screen and called upon all Americans and Christians to convert to Islam immediately, or else.

If that is the best Al Qaeda can do, we should take a measure of the group.

Indeed, Mr. Zawahiri's toothless message — and the videotape Al-Jazeera broadcast yesterday showing Osama bin Laden before September 11, 2001, meeting with some of the terrorist attacks' planners — was just the latest indication that Al Qaeda's better days are behind it, as most Arab and American security officials will readily concede.

Five years after it burst onto the scene with the grandiose attacks of September 11, the terror group is a shadow of its former self. Its chief architects, Messrs. bin Laden and Zawahiri, and their so-called consultative council are on the run; its top field commanders are decimated, and its hundreds of foot soldiers are in jail, being hounded or singing like canaries under torture, or bribery.