Radical notion - the missing al Qaeda A team

The eternal post 9/11 question. Hamas has an A team - despite a very high mortality rate. Why did one operation kill off al Qaeda's A team?

Daunting Question | Talking Points Memo: 

... Jon Stewart asks a genuinely worrisome question: what happens when the terrorists start sending in their A-Team, as opposed to the goofs who've tried the last couple operations?...

Why can't al Qaeda keep recruiting killers?

Maybe it's a problem with their ideology. Maybe there's something about it that doesn't appeal to murderous engineers. Maybe deeply religious Islamists really aren't all that in to murder.