Last week marked the 12th anniversary of 9/11. Just days later Jihadi blogs were saturated with an audio message from Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahri calling on Muslims to continue attacking Americans on their own soil.
Now for the first time al-Zawahri has issued the terrorist organisations detailed guidelines for jihad.
The lengthy document published by the Site Monitoring Service provides a rare look at Al-Qaeda's strategy focused mostly on weakening the US and Israel with more smaller scale style attacks similar to the Boston Bombings. It's essentially a detailed 'terrorism for dummies' guide.
John Miller, an ex FBI operative and National Intelligence Director once met al-Zawahri at a camp in Afghanistan.
He says Osama bin Laden's replacement and former deputy lacks his predecessor's communications skills making his messages weak.
“He's looking at the Boston Marathon which was a terrorist attack but rather small. He's seen the profound effect it's had on Boston and he wants more,” he says.
“To me, the tacit admission is that Al-Qaeda does not feel it's in the position, organizationally, to do what it used to do, which is organize and launch it themselves."
The Global Terrorism database shows that terror attacks and attempted attacks in the United States have become less frequent since the 70s - with the huge exception of 9/11.
From 1970 - 2011 there was more than 104,000 attacks with more than 2600 of them in the US.
The three terrorist organizations with the largest number of attacks on the US from 2001 to 2011 were the Earth Liberation Front (50), the Animal Liberation Front (34) and Al-Qaeda (4)
The most common targets of terrorists in the US were businesses (62 attacks), private citizens and property (59 attacks), and government (43 attacks).
The most common weapons used in terrorist attacks in the United States throughout this period were bombs (53% of all weapons used) and explosives (20% of all weapons used).
The Feed's Patrick Abboud looks at Al-Qaeda and the true impact of terrorism.
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