Steven says he’s becoming convinced that Al Qaeda doesn’t have anything else like 9/11 waiting in the wings, since nothing happened in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

While I share his relief at that, I can’t share his belief that Al Qaeda blew their whole arsenal on 9/11. And I suspect that Western celebrations like the one in Times Square are less attractive to these freaks than we’d like to think; they’ve shown a propensity to lie in wait for long periods, launching big attacks at unexpected moments, and numerous reports suggest there are still a lot of active terror cells in North America and Europe. By some estimates, as many as 70,000 people may have gone through Al Qaeda training camps in the past decade.

Not all of those people will be as scary as Mohammed Atta. But they won’t all be as stupid as Richard Reid either—and there probably are a few Attas lurking about. Al Qaeda may be down, but they’re not out.

(Update: Jeff Jarvis and I are drinking the same unflavored coffee this morning.)