Al Qaeda or "The Base" issued its goals in the mid 1990s. Staff writer Dan Murphy asked three experts to assess the organization's progress.

1. Remove US forces from Saudi Arabia. (In 2001, there were about 4,500 US troops there. Today, about 500 remain.)

2. Remove all foreign armies from all Muslim countries.

3. Destroy Israel and control Jerusalem.

4. Overthrow Arab regimes.

5. Establish a caliphate (a spiritual and secular ruler of the Islamic state.)

Analyst for the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic studies in Cairo, and a newspaper columnist.

1. "When this jihadist movement started, their most compelling objective was to take over power in the Middle East. Gradually they came to the realization that by fighting what they call the 'Far Enemy' they gain more popularity and they're more able to defeat the 'Near Enemy,' i.e. their own regimes."

2. "Al Qaeda couldn't have prayed for any better focal point [than Iraq], with American troops right here in the region. With all those open borders with so many countries, you can just walk in and have a jihad in Iraq. Again, this is exactly what they want."

3. "The most prominent example of how they've been able to use popular anger is the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. For a long time [Al Qaeda] didn't care about the issue of Palestine at all; this wasn't high on their agenda. Their agenda was to take over power in Egypt and so forth. But the failure of the peace process has helped them and all Islamists.

4. "By framing it from the start as a clash of civilizations, starting with the 'Why do they hate us' speech by President Bush, [the US has] played into the radicals' hands. And then the US had the wars, and wars create anger. Instead of isolating what was a small, very fringe group, [the US] targeted a whole people and made them feel that there is a war against Islam and Muslims. This framing... strengthens all Islamist movements. It's redefining our identities. We're not Egyptians or Arabs, we're Muslims.

5. "This isn't likely. But for Arab democrats and secularists, you have to keep fighting against the very notion of this civilizational clash. But it's becoming more difficult. You have to rely on democratic change and hope that this will create a different climate. But secularists like me are in a much weaker position than we were five or ten years ago."

RAND Corp. in Washington, a former US Army captain, and author of "Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves."

1. "It hasn't been an easy five years for Al Qaeda. The Taliban has been overthrown, Al Qaeda's training camps have been scattered, and a number of it's key operational planners have been removed.... Westerners see the war as a finite undertaking [with tangible goals. But Al Qaeda sees the war as an] indefinite undertaking. Bin Laden's not a leader tallying up his victories and failures."

2. The US invasion of Iraq "has gifted [Al Qaeda with] the sort of war that it fights best ... and convinced many Arabs and Muslims of an aggressive America and West."

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