If he gets off, it will be a huge moral victory ... not just for him, but for all the other groups pushing a hard-line agenda. The ripple effect will be tremendous.

It was envisioned as a second wave after 9/11, and he (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) wanted to use Southeast Asians because he thought they could get into the U.S. and hijack the planes more so than Arabs because the U.S. would be more on alert to Arabs after 9/11.

If the past is any precedent, they have planned safe houses and lying low, letting the first dragnet pass over head.

I think he will probably try to do some bold decisions early in his tenure when he has his honeymoon period, but I think the half-life of his honeymoon is not going to be very long.

He's Iraqi after all. If he's not hiding out (in Afghanistan or Pakistan), he's probably headed to Iraq to join the fight there.

It's just a very hard place to protect if you look at where they hit.

Unfortunately, the most aggressive and arguably most dangerous guys are still on the loose. They still present a significant danger.

They saw the 2002 Bali bombing as their only true success because it inflicted foreign casualties, and the collateral damage weren't Muslims.

He's a very cunning character.