A presidential signal?

Maybe not, but one likes to think so.

Obama gave a little talk to his counterterrorism team headed by Bush-holdover John Brennan. There were the routine thanks and the mandatory sports joke.

But what there wasn't was Obama directly blaming al Qaeda for the attacks of 9/11. Those he blamed on generic extremists and terrorists.

A few sentences later, he said America won't rest until she has defeated al Qaeda.

But, it seems, when he was speaking to the real professionals, he was wary of laying 9/11 at the feet of al Qaeda.

Oct. 7, 2009 note: Obama, opines the Times, is seeking some sort of middle ground on the Afghan war. No drastic scaledown or buildup. Yet, the status quo isn't that good. At any rate, suddenly the 9/11 truth idea has political traction; after all, if al Qaeda was little more than a minor pawn in the 9/11 attacks, the political justification for the war recedes. So Obama takes less heat for declining to prosecute the war as vigorously as some demand. (That's not to say that al Qaeda hasn't been responsible for other bloody attacks on Americans.)