Al-Qaeda Head to Militants: Think Smaller

In a speech disseminated yesterday (a day after Sept. 11, points out Reuters), al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri pushed militants to think smaller. He asserted that attacks "by one brother or a few of the brothers" would have a big effect, explaining that "we should bleed America economically by provoking it to continue in its massive expenditure on its security, for the weak point of America is its economy, which has already begun to stagger due to the military and security expenditure." All that would be required to so is an attack "here and there."

Of course, he'd still like to see a "large strike ... even if it takes years of patience for this," CNN reports him as saying. In the meantime, he called on Muslims to eschew the US dollar and boycott American goods. (More al-Qaeda stories.)