New al-Qaida terror for Iraq

It is the most terrible of ironies. When faced with defeat, terrorists commit even greater atrocities. Thus, at a time when the military surge in Iraq had achieved a dramatic fall in violence, Islamist extremists, almost certainly al-Qaida, have committed even more barbaric atrocities.

Two women who were known to be mentally impaired were sent to their deaths Friday with explosives strapped to their chests, killing as many as 100 people in two popular pet markets in Baghdad, leaving behind scenes of carnage on a scale not seen for nearly two years. As U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker observed in an interview with The Associated Press, "There is nothing they won't do if they think it will work in creating carnage and the political fallout that comes from that."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the massacre of innocent civilians demonstrates that al-Qaida is "the most bankrupt of movements." She added, "The struggle is not over and there will be from time to time terrible days like today." But she predicted the atrocities would make the Iraqi people "tougher in the fight" against terrorism.

According to news agency reports, the two women were known in the markets because they sold birds. Iraq's chief military spokesman was quoted by the AP as saying that the women, who suffered from Downs syndrome, may not have known they were on suicide missions. He said the bombs were detonated by remote control.

Terrorists sow the seeds of their own destruction. As they grow more desperate, they resort to more and more heinous means to inflict death and destruction.

In Iraq, particularly in largely Sunni Anbar province, which was initially profoundly hostile to American forces, there has been a counter reaction to al-Qaida terror. So-called "Awakening" groups have been formed by Sunni tribal leaders to fight back against the al-Qaida foreign fighters who were once their allies in opposing U.S. and government troops.

The horror of Friday's terrorist bombings, the worst since three car bombs killed 80 people in Baghdad last August, reveals that al-Qaida has to find other means than car bombs. Vastly improved security has made it much more difficult to rig cars and trucks with explosives and put suicide bombers in the drivers' seats.

According to the AP, women have been used in ever greater frequency in suicide attacks.Records show that since the start of the war at least 151 people have been killed in at least 17 attacks or attempted attacks by female suicide bombers — eight of them since the U.S. military surge began in July 2007. As the AP report noted, the use of "unknowing agents of death" is a new and even more reprehensible violation of civilized standards.

But it is also an signal that al-Qaida is running short of volunteers for self-immolation and an indication that there is an Iraqi awakening to the evil of al-Qaida.