Barbara Slavin of USA Today interviewed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week. Here's an excerpt:

MS. SLAVIN: Well, Al-Qaida certainly is doing a booming business lately.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, al-Qaida was doing a booming business since the mid-1990s and finally al-Qaida is actually being challenged. And al-Qaida is being challenged and of course they are recruiting and coming out and fighting, but they are at least now being challenged. And if you want to talk about how you deal with a specific al-Qaida cell on Monday of next week, that's one thing; but if you want to talk about how you eliminate the ideology of hatred that produced al-Qaida and will produce more al-Qaidas unless you eliminate it -- how you get, in other words, to a permanent peace -- then you have to have a different kind of Middle East than the one that produced the ideology of hatred that made those people fly airplanes into buildings.

Here is Slavin's story.