"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message ...
"Airyx" wrote in message
om...


I think you are taking a little bit different track then what the
original poster was suggesting. It is true that the US is trying to
leverage technology to minimize death during war, however, the
availability of cheap technology also allows such things as remotely
detonated bombs, and improved communications between insurgents or
terrorists to coordinate their attacks. A distributed organization
like Al Queda could not have existed 10 years ago because the
communication necessary to maintain control was not cheaply available.

On the contrary cell like organisations for terrorist groups
are as old as the hills. The 12th Persian sec of assassins
used it as did groups in revolutionary France and the
anarchists and Fenians of the 19th century.

Those were all very localized. It doesn't take much technology for a
bunch of disgruntled citizens to get together and decide to "take it
to the man".

Sure, cell-like groups have existed in the past, but not one as large
and wide spread as what we see today. These guys are conducting
coordinated operations in Indonesia, the US, Spain, Saudi Arabia,
Several Central African countries, and of course, Iraq, all in the
span of about two months. Their level of organizational training,
management, and resource planning is amazing considering how far apart
each cell is from the next. It is also amazing that they can operate
under a single game plan while their senior leadership is stuck in a
cave somewhere.

Without contact via, email, web, mobile phone, sat com, or whatever
technology they use for planning and resources assignments, I don't
see how this thing can continue to exist. Somebody needs to do a
Management Case study on Al Qaeda.