Islamic Terrorists Have Busy Day

Islamic terrorists have been very busy today. They killed three people in Thailand. They murdered more than 20 and wounded 70 in a major suicide bombingin Lahore, Pakistan.

A suicide bomber blew himself up among police deployed outside a court in eastern Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least 24 people and wounding more than 70, officials and witnesses said.

The blast in front of Lahore High Court was the latest in a wave of attacks targeting politicians and security forces ahead of Feb. 18 parliamentary elections. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suspicion will likely fall on militants linked to Taliban and al-Qaida.

Bill Roggio has more. The body count keeps rising wherever these terrorists operate, and ignoring the fact that it's about their ideology will have deadly consequences.

These terrorists see murdering those who are not as Islamist as they are as a duty and obligation under Islam. However, there is one component to these attacks that could be exploited to defeat the Islamists - tribal loyalties. That's how the Sunni tribes in Iraq rose up against the Sunni dominated al Qaeda. They saw that the al Qaeda were busy targeting their tribes despite the fact that these tribes had been predisposed to helping al Qaeda defeat the US. The tribes came to realize that al Qaeda was not only far worse than the US could ever be, but that they were targeting anyone who wasn't as Islamist as they were. Those tribes began to regard the US as an ally and started helping the US in earnest this year as the US surged troops into Iraq to crush the al Qaeda threat and insurgency that is dominated by al Qaeda.

The same may be possible in Pakistan, but the situation is far more fluid and complex because of the instability of the Musharraf government and his unwillingness to take long term and decisive actions to defeat the Islamists. He's only been willing to do just as much as necessary to retain power and no more.

That could be changing slightly as some of the tribes in Warizistan are beginning to turn on Taliban aligned with al Qaeda because some of their tribesmen have been murdered by the al Qaeda aligned Taliban.

The US and coalition forces haven't been sitting back. They've been taking the fight to al Qaeda and the Islamists. They dropped a serious amount of ordnance on the terrorists outside Baghdad.

U.S. bombers and jet fighters unleashed 40,000 pounds of explosives during a 10-minute airstrike Thursday morning, flattening what the military called al-Qaida in Iraq safe havens on the southern outskirts of the capital.

A military statement said B-1 bombers and F-16 fighters dropped the explosives on 40 targets in Arab Jabour in 10 strikes.

The massive attack was part of Operation Phantom Phoenix, a nationwide campaign launched Tuesday to root out al-Qaida in Iraq fighters.

The US casualties reported in the past several days has been due to the current military operations - including the six troops killed when a booby-trapped building exploded in Diyala.

Afghan forces captured 11 Taliban thugs, including Pakistanis, around the country including Kabul, Kandahar, and various provinces for plotting attacks. That comes on the heels of the capture of a former Pakistani general and five of his minions in Lahore, Pakistan who was now al Qaeda and prepping suicide bombers.

Pakistani security forces have captured the leader of an al Qaeda suicide cell that was behind the attack on the Sargodha military base last fall. Ahsan al Haq and five cell members have been detained by Pakistani security forces in the city of Lahore, Reuters reported.

"We recovered explosives and jackets used for suicide bombings at his house next to a madrassa (Islamic school)," and anonymous intelligence official told Reuters. "All of them admitted they were behind the Sargodha attack and were planning to carry out similar attacks, even against politicians."

Al Haq, a retired Pakistani Army major, "was said have been close to Afghan Muslim guerrilla commander Younis Khalis, who battled Soviet forces in the 1980s and later had links with the Taliban," Reuters reported. "Haq ran a militant training camp in Afghanistan during Taliban rule."