Maybe Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has the capacity for embarrassment after all. When thousands of Jordanians erupted in anger at the slaughter of two families celebrating a wedding, it clearly showed that the terrorist mastermind had made a huge error in judgment. Yesterday, Zarqawi attempted to mitigate the PR disaster he created among Muslims by releasing a tape insisting that he never meant to target wedding celebrants, even as the mother of bride passed away from her severe injuries:

In the past, al-Zarqawi has defended Muslim civilian casualties in attacks by his suicide bombers in Iraq, saying they were justified because the attacks are part of a "jihad" against U.S. occupiers and their Iraqi allies. "God ordered us to attack the infidels by all means ... even if armed infidels and unintended victims — women and children — are killed together," he said in an audiotape released in May.

But he sounded more penitent in Friday's audio.

"People of Jordan, we did not undertake to blow up any wedding parties," he said. "For those Muslims who were killed, we ask God to show them mercy, for they were not targets. We did not and will not think for one moment to target them even if they were people of immorality and debauchery."

In the deadliest of the triple attacks, a bomber set off his explosives belt in the Radisson hotel, killing 30 people at a Jordanian-Palestinian wedding party in a ballroom. Both the bride's parents were among the dead, as was the father of the groom.

Zarqawi wants Muslims to believe that sending two "agents" into a ballroom obviously occupied by a wedding reception, positioning themselves to maximize the damage, and then exploding themselves to kill as many as possible amounts to some kind of unforeseen error. All he proves is that he isn't terribly bright or reliable when it comes to picking his targets. Nor would he care if the end result destabilized Jordan enough for King Abdullah to either flee or agree to ally with Zarqawi. Like most sociopathic monsters, he's only sorry to the degree that his crime backfired on him, and only apologizes to the extent that he's sorry that others cannot recognize his overall genius.

Muslims have finally started asking themselves why Zarqawi keeps blowing up civilians and other Muslims instead of Americans and Israelis. The reason? Americans and Israelis now shoot back, and the kill ratio mostly favors the West. The limited resources of the terrorists force them to slaughter the unarmed instead, and these tactics have started a backlash that won't stop as long as Zarqawi doesn't stop murdering them indiscriminately. Making a tape saying in essence, "Oops, sorry!", that insults their intelligence won't do anything but harden them against Zarqawi's bloodthirstiness.

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