The jokes always fly when US drone attacks claim to dispatch an al-Qaedan of supposed rank. “How many 3rd in command does al-Qaeda have?” -asks the too-clever saw. As Mohammad approaches infinity, I believe, is the inconvenient answer. When a sports competitor disqualifies from the rankings, another moves up. The military intelligence which charts our adversary’s chain of command has me thinking about our own. Our grunts overseas fight under exasperating tiers of pay grades, but we know our number one in command is President Obama. Do you suppose Americans expect that al-Qaeda or the Taliban have every license to hunt and execute our number one and his aids, through number 99, including their families?

The latest number three, Sheikh Sa’id al-Masri, also known as Mustafa al-Yazid, was killed along with his wife, three daughters, a grandchild and other men, women and children.

If one could indeed rank a command structure in a single line, I bet not many could guess what it really is. Americans know there’s an official chain of authority which Al Haig violated so famously, but the political hierarchy is a facade. I would be most interested to hear what foreign intelligence determines to be the chain of command in the west.