- New Yorker – An interesting look at the potential long-term consequences of using unmanned aerial vehicles for terrorist assassinations.

- Esquire – (An archival article, from CJ Chivers, on terrorism in Chechnya. Relevant in regards to last week’s tragic events in Boston.) – On the first day of school in 2004, a Chechen terrorist group struck the Russian town of Beslan. Targeting children, they took more than eleven hundred hostages. The attack represented a [...]

- Washington Post – Mark Bowden debunks 5 myths about the raid on Osama bin Laden.

- Vanity Fair – President Obama saw it as a “50–50” proposition. Admiral Bill McRaven, mission commander, knew something would go wrong. So how did the raid that killed bin Laden get green-lighted? In an adaptation from his new book, Mark Bowden weaves together accounts from Obama and top decision-makers for the full story behind [...]

- Los Angeles Times – Andrew J. Bacevich writes that even as our troops march hither and yon, America seems to be losing the thread in an ‘era of persistent conflict.’

- Military Times – The sixth and final part of Sean Naylor’s look at the war on terror in Africa.

- Army Times – Part 5 of Sean Naylor’s look at the war on terror in Africa.

- Army Times – Fourth in a series by Sean Naylor. Often-frustrating search for Harun Fazul combined high-tech gear, low tech human intelligence and courage

- Army Times – The third in a series by Sean Naylor looking at U.S. military operations in the Horn of Africa after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

- Army Times – The second in a series by Sean Naylor looking at U.S. military activity in the Horn of Africa.

- Army Times – First of a series by Sean Naylor. Clandestine SEAL mission planted cameras, but little came out of the images.

- Wall Street Journal – Andrew Krepinevich writes that the world’s vast undersea energy infrastructure—oil and gas platforms, wellheads, pipelines and pumps—is now vulnerable to attack by cheap submarines and unmanned vehicles.

- New Yorker – What happened that night in Abbottabad.

New York Times – The Coming Swarm John Arquilla on how we should be combatting terrorism today – fighting swarms with swarms.

New York Times Magazine – The Saharan Conundrum Terrorism experts feared that North Africa would be the next Afghanistan: a haven, and a launching pad, for Al Qaeda. Why hasn’t it turned out that way?

New York Times – ‘Terror’ Is The Enemy Philip Bobbitt gives his views on how the war on terror should be waged in the future.

Foreign Affairs – Marc Sageman claims that al Qaeda’s leadership is finished and today’s terrorist threat comes primarily from below. But the terrorist elites are alive and well, and ignoring the threat they pose will have disastrous consequences.more…

New York Review of Books – Ahmed Rashid reviews the current state of the jihad against the West.more…

New Yorker – The making of an Al Qaeda homegrown.more…

Foreign Affairs – Despite all the ominous warnings of wily terrorists and imminent attacks, there has been neither a successful strike nor a close call in the United States since 9/11. The reasonable — but rarely heard — explanation is that there are no terrorists within the United States, and few have the means or [...]