With words like that, big things were obviously expected from Mr. Gadahn and a hoped-for wave of likeminded souls from within the U.S. who would rise up and follow his call. Yet, the scattered groups of fanatics who have been detained in Europe and North America in possession of Gadahn’s videos seem to largely suffer from the same fatal flaws as Mr. Gadahn himself: they have an overdeveloped sense of grandeur, they lack any sense of humility, and they are often emotionally infantile. Meanwhile, Gadahn has turned into a bloated and bizarre media caricature of himself–the undisputed Rush Limbaugh of Al-Qaida. He now appears regularly on “Bin Laden TV”, dispensing bits of personal wisdom about everything from the 9/11 attacks to the affairs of the Palestinians. His persistent threats against America no longer seem so prescient, and his eyebrow-raising ideological tangents into controversial Muslim issues would appear to be strongly inadvisable for Al-Qaida. With each new consecutive video he appears in, he only adds to the punchline and further dilutes the underlying seriousness of Al-Qaida’s intentions.