Al Qaeda "greatest threat to US"

Actually, the story is that the State Department's annual Country Reports on Terrorism are out. http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2007/
Iran is named as the most important and active state sponsor of terrorism. I havent had time yet to dig behind the press release level. There may be more interesting stuff in there. It's all a bit catch 22. "Failed" states provide the havens for terrorism and by definition cant be state sponsors of terrorism, so the variables and assumptions are wrong here. The problem of the US model is that it requires a "public enemy number one", and hasnt yet got the idea that we are dealing with a hydra, not a superhero [discuss].