and retired colonel cedric leighton had a 26 year career in the air force where he focused on intelligenceid a number of stints in the middle east. he now has his own risk management consulting firm. peter pham you've heard lynn lindsey hilsum talk about france kicking the hornet's nest. do you agree that the action in algeria signals a regionalization of this conflict? that it's a very different thing now? >> very much so. although it's been a regional challenge for some time-- except our attention wasn't focused upon it. but to remind us al qaeda in the islamic maghreb certainly staged this. i think they had several goals in mind. servely if they had been successful, grab a few more hostages they're already holding half a dozen french hostages to add to the number they could use and leverage. but what's interesting is what they didn't do. they didn't blow up that gas installation. that was reminder to the algerian government that we can strike, we didn't choose to do so but next time we could hit the vital oil and natural gas facilities which supply by the way one-fifth of europe's energ

and retired colonel cedric leighton had a 26 year career in the air force where he focused on intelligence did a number of stints in the middle east. he now has his own risk management consulting firm. peter pham, you've heard lynn lindsey hilsum talk about france kicking the hornet's nest. do you agree that the action in algeria signals a regionalization of this conflict? that it's a very different thing now? >> very much so. although it's been a regional challenge for some time-- except our attention wasn't focused upon it. but to remind us al qaeda in the islamic maghreb certainly staged this. i think they had several goals in mind. servely if they had been successful, grab a few more hostages, they're already holding half a dozen french hostages to add to the number they could use and leverage. but what's interesting is what they didn't do. they didn't blow up that gas installation. that was reminder to the algerian government that we can strike, we didn't choose to do so but next time we could hit the vital oil and natural gas facilities which supply, by the way, one-fifth of europe's