THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS: What makes it tough to gauge our success against Al-Qaeda is that we don't know whether their attempts to follow up on 9/11 have been foiled, or that they haven't tried yet. If it's the former, we've been successful; if it's the latter, we've been lucky.

If I'm correctly reading this CNN story about what John Walker Lindh told his interrogators, it appears that we must have thwarted Al Qaeda attacks. The key graf:

"He [Walker Lindh] told his interrogators that one of his former instructors said that 'this was the first attack' and that a second wave would come at the beginning of Ramadan, in mid-November, and 'make America forget about the first attack.' The instructor also talked of a third wave, in early 2002, but provided no details."

It's way past early 2002, and neither the second or third waves have happened. I'm not saying that Al-Qaeda has been completely neutralized, but isn't this pretty good evidence that they're not punching in the same weight class?

UPDATE: This AP story has much more detail.