Hijacking the World

Al Qaeda's record of death and destruction extends back long before September 11. In October 1993, operatives trained by al Qaeda killed 18 U.S. soldiers serving with United Nations peacekeeping forces in Somalia. This organization bombed the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, killing 223 and wounding more than 4,000 - the overwhelming majority of them Kenyans. And in October 2000, terrorists attacked the Navy ship USS Cole with a bomb-laden small boat, killing 17 American crew members.

Al Qaeda is closely tied to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and other terrorist groups.

Al Qaeda doesn't take credit for its failures, but it is implicated in other terrorist conspiracies. In January 1995, Philippine authorities discovered a plan to blow up as many as 12 jetliners as they crossed the Pacific. In Jordan, authorities foiled the so-called Millennium Plot to attack Westerners across Jordan during the January 1, 2000, celebrations. A plan to bomb Los Angeles International Airport failed when customs officials at the Canadian border found bomb materials in a car. Authorities in Frankfurt, Germany, arrested members of a terrorist cell who were assembling bombs and had surveillance tapes of a crowded Christmas market in Strasbourg, France.

Al Qaeda is by no means the only terrorist band operating today. On October 10, the United States issued a "List of Most Wanted Terrorists." Along with al Qaeda suspects, the 22 names include suspects who hijacked a TWA jetliner in 1985 and killed an American passenger; detonated a tanker truck in 1996 at Khobar Towers, a military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. Air Force personnel and wounding 280; and bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, killing six and wounding hundreds.

NEXT: Defeating Terror/Defending Freedom: The Taliban Connection