ABSTRACT
As this volume was going to press [December 2008], a major U.S. government report was released that, although arrived at independently from the authors in this volume, echoed many of their findings. The Report of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism (appropriately entitled “World at Risk”) describes jihadists as key threats for using WMD and in its opening paragraph states that: “unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013.”* This sober assessment not only underscores the need for those researchers and scholars who study this phenomenon to continue to examine the possibility of such an attack, but demands heightened vigilance and dynamism by global intelligence and counterterrorism agencies in the face of this very real threat.
