"We haven't lost, but we're losing [the war on terror]," says Marc Sageman, the author of "Understanding Terror Networks" and a former CIA case officer who served as a liaison to the Afghan mujahideen in the late 1980s.

"The old Al Qaeda is basically neutralized. Now the danger comes from self-generated groups, they stay at home and they don't need to contact Al Qaeda -- they know what Al Qaeda thinks. So in a way it's more ubiquitous and the theater of operations is now the whole world."