"Early this summer [2006], a new strategy for combating terrorism, described by its authors as "revolutionary" in concept, arrived on President Bush's desk. The highly classified National Implementation Plan for the first time set government-wide goals and assigned responsibility for achieving them to specific departments and agencies. Written by officials at the National Counterterrorism Center, under a directive signed by the president last winter, the 160-page plan aspires to achieve what has eluded the Bush administration in the five years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: bringing order and direction to the fight against terrorism.... New initiatives such as the National Implementation Plan were launched to eliminate overlap and set priorities for what the administration now calls the "long war." Beyond drawing sharper lines of responsibility, officials said, the plan is designed to drag the nation's counterterrorism strategy back from military dominance, better balancing the military "whack" with diplomacy and the "hearts and minds" campaigns that are now seen as critical to long-term victory. [President] Bush was briefed on the plan on June 26. A White House official said the plan reflects [President] Bush's feeling that the terrorism fight is "all-encompassing," including military attacks but also "the war of ideas and the softer side, the long-term battle." Within half a dozen broad objectives, the document designates lead and subordinate agencies to carry out more than 500 discrete counterterrorism tasks, among them vanquishing al-Qaeda, protecting the homeland, wooing allies, training experts in other languages and cultures, and understanding and influencing the Islamic psyche". (DeYoung, Washington Post, Aug. 9, 2007)