It means people don't want Tomahawk missiles shoved up their behinds. It means we're successfully making the whole country afraid of kinetic operations. Which can be construed as good, by some people. But it's not like Al Qaeda had any support in Somalia *before* we invaded. Or like any operations or terrorist attacks had ever been launched from there. We torched the place because some guys knew some guys.

After 18 months, we have eventually plunked one self-created Somalian Hitlist figure who wasn't even a blip on a screen two years ago:

At the cost of driving a recovering nation into massive human displacement, famine, and civil war. Killing, oh, tens of thousands, raping and torturing indiscriminately, and sabotaging an entire nation.

That's what our Ethiopian 'allies' have done under our green light and willing wink-and-nod.

It's the Salvador Allende overthrow times ten, and but even more wildly asymettric, and even less effective, because we sure as heck don't get a better CT situation of it.

I'll never understand why we needed to send the Ethiopians in and destroy the whole country simply to whack this guy.

But nothing associated with Somalia should be considered a victory.

AQ lost Al Jeezera about a year ago. Now there losing the NY Times. Yeah, their pretty much screwed.

Does this mean AQ's influ is failing?

Whether these continued decapitation strikes are impacting planning for major operations — or the lull is mere coincidence — is hard to say.

My guess is if they're planning anything, it's going to be just prior to the election. they may just be keeping their powder dry until then. Of course that would suggest that whatever they come up with at that point is a decent guage of what they're capable of doing, which seems an important metric.