Al Qaeda Imitates The Onion

Back when The Onion was still funny, it produced the following:

WASHINGTON, DC—Preparing for another possible showdown with Iraq, President Clinton deployed more than 15,000 very special U.S. forces to the Persian Gulf region Tuesday.

Clinton said the objective of the mission, dubbed Operation Great Job!, is twofold: to keep pressure on Saddam Hussein to permit the return of U.N. weapons inspectors, and to provide America's very special forces with a positive, rewarding, esteem-building experience.

"With Operation Great Job!, we send the message loud and clear to Saddam Hussein that his open defiance of the United Nations and international law will not be tolerated," Clinton said. "We also send the equally important message to our own troops that what's important is not whether you defeat the enemy, but that you try your best and have fun."

More recently, Al Qaeda took that seriously:

Two women thought to suffer from Down's syndrome may have been unwilling suicide bombers in twin blasts that killed up to 73 people at pet markets in Baghdad today.

In 2002, the late Andrew Olmsted had some comments on a similar shift in tactics among Palestinians:

Nations losing wars consistently expand their draft pools. The close of the American Civil War saw children and old men serving in the Confederate armies, and the Nazis used children and old men in their Volksgrenadier divisions in 1944-45. Now the Palestinians are using women as suicide bombers when they once turned them away. It could be this is simply equal opportunity finally reaching the Arab world. But it could also signal a dearth of volunteers to strap high explosives to one's body and seek out Israelis.

Curiously enough, the suicide bombing rate in Israel has gone way down since then. Will the same happen in Iraq?