No. 4 Al-Qaeda

John McCain said he knew "how to get Bin Laden," but it's up to Obama, the winner of the presidential election, to capture the terrorist who's been on top of the U.S.'s most-wanted list ever since he masterminded the 9/11 attacks.

While there are indications that Osama Bin Laden might be isolated somewhere on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border regions, his organization has hardly been snuffed out during the ongoing seven-year War on Terror.

In fact, there are reasons to believe that as an organization, al-Qaeda has extended its reach even if some of its operational and fundraising capabilities have been compromised. After being chased out of Sudan in the late 1990s, al-Qaeda has returned to Africa - taking advantage of the presence of the numerous failed states there. Its network on the continent now stretches from the Horn of Africa on the Somali coast, up to Algeria and all the way to the northwestern shore in Morocco.

There is also concern that al-Qaeda has evolved from a just a terrorist organization with a single purpose to a sophisticated non-state actor with a far-reaching agenda. Its attacks have always been about more than just death and destruction.

Al-Qaeda came perilously close to pulling off another audacious attack in 2006, when it was foiled in attempting to blow up as many as 10 U.S. and Canadian airliners over the Atlantic. With the "Bush Doctrine" on the wane and a certain new direction to be implemented by the Obama Administration, would al-Qaeda choose to seize the initiative and dictate its own terms?