WELL, THIS LOOKS LIKE GOOD NEWS:

A top al Qaeda member and a leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, Riduan Isamuddin — also known as Hambali — was arrested as part of a CIA undercover operation in the last 24 hours. The operation was cooperation with an unnamed Southeast Asian country that wants its participation kept secret, officials told ABCNEWS.

The CIA called the arrest the “most significant capture since that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,” who was captured in March 2003, and believed to command al Qaeda’s global terror network and have masterminded the 9/11 attacks. In the past, the CIA has called the Indonesia-born Hambali the “Osama bin Laden” of Southeast Asia.

Glad they’ve nabbed him.

UPDATE: Pejman Yousefzadeh notes that this is more evidence that Iraq didn’t distract us from the pursuit of Al Qaeda. Meanwhile Patrick Belton at OxBlog offers thanks to the — necessarily unnamed — people who pulled this off.