Dressed in combat fatigues with a camouflage scarf wrapped around his head and an assault rifle propped against his left shoulder, its long magazine curling across his chest, Shekau berates the Nigerian government for its treatment of the Boko Haram fighters it has captured.
The fact that the Obama administration is preparing to overhaul its approach and vet, train and equip the so-called moderate Syrian rebels attests to its lack of confidence in the only opposition fighters it has backed so far: the loosely organized Free Syrian Army, more a shifting franchise operation than a unified fighting force with a coherent central command.
Under constant attack from small groups of fighters, it has been hunkered down for three days now.
Originally numbering only 200 or so fighters, it has focused more on the business of kidnapping than on ideological warfare.
That step would be followed by a general cease-fire within 48 hours by both the Syrian military and the armed opposition fighters it has sought to crush.
"The fog of war hasn't fully dissipated, but for this generation of war fighters, it has lifted to a significant degree," said Loren Thompson, a defense expert who is chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a research group.
Mr. O'Hanlon, a close associate of David H. Petraeus, the former C.I.A. chief, argues that the active-duty army and Marine levels can be reduced; the navy, rather than increasing the size of its fleet, can deploy its resources more efficiently, and the air force only needs about half of the new F-35 joint strike fighters it has ordered.
As al-Shabab is such a secretive movement, it is difficult to say how many fighters it has.
No-one knows how many fighters it has but the number is likely to run into the thousands.
US President Barack Obama is considering sending several hundred more troops to Iraq to help train local forces battling Islamic State (IS) fighters, it has been reported today.
