Cat's nine lives almost up

The LA Times has a good backgrounder piecing together what we know about a fairly elusive, but fairly senior, Al Qaeda terrorist who had a hand in the 7-7 bombings, the airline bombing plan of 2006, and the recent attempts in Denmark as well. Name's Abu Ubaida al-Masri, but I don't think he's the al-Masri in Iraq that I'm thinking of. The terrorist trading cards are no help here, since there's no picture for this new guy.

He's dodged a lot of close calls so far, which suggests that even though he may have been promoted through the ranks by attrition, he's a little smarter than your average Richard-Reid level thug. He may have taken over from Khaled Sheikh Mohammed as Al Qaeda's foreign operations guy, which is a high-profile job:

Cultivating the art of survival through anonymity, Masri may have beaten the odds once again. Or it may be that, for strategic reasons, both sides want to keep his fate ambiguous as a successor emerges.

The external operations chief, the senior British official said, has "the job with the lowest life expectancy in international politics."