The beheading of US hostage Paul Johnson highlights once again the tense relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia ...

Neither Bush nor Cheney mentioned Saudi Arabia. Powell thanked Riyadh for its efforts to find Johnson.

Kerry had stern words for the Saudis. "It is essential that we have the full cooperation of the Saudi government in tracking down these terrorists and destroying Al Qaeda. This must be our nation’s highest priority," Kerry said in a statement.

"al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations still have ready access to financial resources, and that fact constitutes an ongoing threat to the United States."

# Saudi Arabia has not fully implemented its new laws and regulations, and because of that, opportunities for the witting or unwitting financing of terrorism persist.

# There is no evidence that Saudi Arabia has taken public punitive actions against any individual for financing terror. As a result, Saudi Arabia has yet to demand personal accountability in its efforts to combat terrorist financing and, more broadly and fundamentally, to de-legitimize these activities.

# Saudi Arabia continues to export radical extremism. "Saudi Arabia funds the global propagation of Wahabism, a brand of Islam that, in some instances, supports militancy... We are concerned that this massive spending is helping to create the next generation of terrorists."

The task force recommends that:

Saudi Arabia is the golden egg. It is the spiritual heartland of al Qaeda itself.

When Washington loses confidence in the Saudi government, it will ratchet up its already intense pressure on Riyadh to cooperate in the war against terrorism.

If al Qaeda can find a cooperative branch or a support base within the royal family, then the "regime" could persist -- at least in name -- even as Riyadh's political orientation shifts.

Taking control of the energy industry would give al Qaeda global leverage.

The Interior Ministry has yet to clarify exactly how it caught up with such a significant group in the middle of downtown Riyadh.

It remains somewhat murky what links might exist between Osama bin Laden and those operating within Saudi Arabia.

Of all the ways Mr. Bush persuaded Americans to back the invasion of Iraq last year, the most plainly dishonest was his effort to link his war of choice with the battle against terrorists worldwide.

The problem is that the agencies aren't always set up to share information or to communicate with one another, and in some cases they even seem actively hostile toward doing so.

So the disagreements aren't productive, because they’re not put in the service of a common goal, and because so much information is kept locked up within each branch, rather than being aggregated.

Donald Rumsfeld and the President kept on talking about waging this new kind of war, an unconventional war, and using Special Forces in a new way, but, in reality, it was just the same old thing.

To really go after an entrenched, complex terrorist organization, you have to be much more subtle.

It's just another example of beheading the messenger.

"Very embarrassing. I am not a happy camper over this. We were wrong."

"Nobody was out to cook the books. Errors crept in."

"I am regretful that this has happened."

"... we are still trying to determine what went wrong ..."

"It's a very big mistake. And we are not happy about this big mistake."

"We know we're killing a lot, capturing a lot, collecting arms ... We just don't know yet whether that's the same as winning."

The world's governments and militaries have a striking inability to absorb and apply lessons learned. Guerrilla groups and terrorist organizations, on the other hand, learn lessons very well.

In any military operation it is essential to acquire, coordinate, analyze, and disseminate "actionable intelligence." Here, the United States has fallen far short of the mark in Iraq.

There will always be a fundamental asymmetry in the dynamic between insurgency and counterinsurgency.

Al Qaeda carried out its most successful attack since 9/11 last weekend, and much of that success was a result of the American reaction.

In the grand scheme of things, it was a small-scale attack. The real target was the willingness of foreigners to stay in the country.