"The goal appears to have been to create maximum embarrassment for Tony Blair and George Bush in order to impress al-Qaida followers in the Middle East and elsewhere," said Stratfor's Director of Geopolitical Analysis and senior analyst Rodger Baker.

Knowing that headlines and pictures of the bombings would circle the globe, the attacks were planned to send out the message that al-Qaida remains active and able to terrorize the world's major capitals, Baker said.

Baker believes the islamist network's strength has steadily diminished since 2002, contrary to a widely held belief that al-Qaida has flouished thanks to instability in Iraq.

A report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies featured in Time magazine last May said that despite the seizing of half of al-Qaida's 30 senior leaders and the killing or capturing of around 2,000 rank-and-file members since Sept. 11, 2001, the organization still had some 18,000 operatives worldwide, including 1,000 in Iraq.

Jonathan Stevenson, editor of the report, and a senior fellow for counter-terrorism at the Institute, said the invasion of Iraq had "strengthened rather than weakened Al-Qaida."

It is generally agreed that the ousting of the Taliban in Afghanistan dealt al-Qaida a devastating blow by depriving them of a centralized place from which to train and command the organization. But a chaotic Iraq has erased those gains, Stevenson says.

"Iraq has become the new Afghanistan, but with distinctions," Stevenson told United Press International.

While Taliban-ruled Afghanistan was a "true sanctuary" for al-Qaida trainers, Iraq has become an even truer training ground, he said.

"They (al-Qaida) are learning more (in Iraq) because they face a live threat" from both U.S. and Iraqi forces, he said.

"The fear is that (Musab) al-Zarqawi, the self-appointed al-Qaida head in Iraq, is beginning to think of himself as a global player," and "may dispatch jihadists to Europe to populate a European network."

Stevenson's comments echo information released by John Stevens, the former London Metropolitan police chief, late last week, which estimated that as many as 3,000 British-born or British-based people have passed through al-Qaida's training camps.

But the Stratfor analyst says well-trained al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq will not take their terrorism global.

"They don't have the oversight, mind, capability, big dreamers and financiers who could coordinate" a global movement, Baker told UPI. "There is no central ideological command and control."

Iraq's al-Qaida are "thinking locally and acting locally," he said. Even those who stream into Iraq through its porous borders to train with al-Qaeda and fight in the insurgency end up returning to their home countries, he said. "There is no base any longer where they can all go and pontificate over strategy."

Some experts wonder where the data for such predictions is coming from.

Brian Jackson, a terrorism analyst for the Rand Corporation, told UPI he did not think there was a great deal of data to base assessments about recruitment and mobility on, though he said the attacks in London would clearly serve as "a potent recruiting tool".

One of the difficulties with predicting if al-Qaida in Iraq will take their terror abroad, he said, is that cells can operate entirely on their own.

The question of whether foreign-born insurgents that have fought and trained with al-Qaida in Iraq will go on to threaten the U.S. mainland or our closest allies depends on where they call home, Jackson said.

"Even if they are focusing their attention within the Middle East they could pose a threat to Western and European interests," he added.

Lack of data may explain why two completely opposing theories on the status of the terrorist group's recruitment can propagate.

Some, like Stevens, say that as the Iraq insurgency becomes increasingly oriented towards Islamic radicalism it will seek to emulate the example of set by al-Qaida on Sept. 11. Already, they employ suicide bombers, he added.

Baker, on the other hand, argues that al-Qaida's attack record since the destruction of the World Trade Center shows a clear decline in their capacity.

While attacks since Sept. 11 have held to the typical 18-month time frame of recurrence, they have not been nearly as successful, neither in Madrid nor London, Baker said.

"Sept. 11 should have been the standard by which future attacks could be judged."

But the Madrid train attack was of a much smaller scale, and the London bomb had almost no effect on financial markets or transportation, he said.

The fact that the terrorist organization has not followed admonishments by its guru also points to a faltering morale, Baker said.

"We see in the Islamic discourse there is not a strong support of bin-ladenism."

Besides some dissent in Saudi Arabia and Iran, "you don't see people rising up against their 'corrupt' regimes," as Bin Laden advised them, he said.

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