From Murdoc:
When the US military begins accepting more men without high school diplomas than it did previously, it's reported as a sure sign that it's getting more difficult to convince educated men to join up. So when terrorists begin recruiting and training little boys, isn't it a sure sign that the terrorists are having to lower their own standards, possibly because we're killing all of their trained men and they're having difficulties recruiting replacements?
The reference is to this story in USA Today: "Al-Qaeda video shows boys training to kill, kidnap." I've always been dubious of the notion that it didn't matter how many terrorists we killed because that number would always be outpaced by recruitment (because, in general, it is American foreign policy that breeds terrorism, and in particular the Bush administration). Killing terrorists is an inherently good thing. And if it's not an end in and of itself, it's pretty darn close. The more terrorists you maim and kill, the less attractive terrorism becomes as a career option for disaffected Muslim youths (rich and poor). And the fact that Iraqis are turning to children and the mentally handicapped as a recruitment pool, just as the the Palestinians did as the last intifada petered out, would seem to bode well for this kind of logic.