Promotion from within

I see we've managed to kill still another Al Qaeda leader, someone who was supposedly the Number 2 guy in the organization. So how many of the top leadership have we offed to date? If promotion is strictly from within, it's got to be getting to where the "number 2" guy is also the poor sap who gets to empty the wastebaskets and scrub the floors. Pretty soon they're going to run out of members to promote. I have this image of the lower echelon Al Qaeda members, what you might term the support staff (the gophers, file clerks, whatever, the dudes who claim to be for jihad but don't really want to strap on a C-4 vest) reacting to the news there's an opening at the top with a fair amount of nervousness while talking up their colleagues' qualifications and doing a pretty good Chip 'n' Dale impression:

Ahmed: "Promote Mustafa -- he deserves it more than I do."

Mustafa: "No, no. I am not worthy. Please, Ahmed is best qualified."

Ahmed: "No, I insist, Mustafa should get the job."

And so it goes. . .