Why do they still bother with the threats?

I commented a few days ago about a news headline that showcased the usual Hamas threats of revenge. Today, A-Qaeda is issuing a threat to avenge Al-Zarqawi's death, to wit:

Al-Qaeda threatened to avenge the killing by US forces last week of the terror network's chief in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in an internet message addressed to the Islamic world.

"God has preserved the patient leaders, such as Sheikh Osama bin Laden and Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri (bin Laden's number two) and their partisans, to continue fighting and to avenge al-Zarqawi,” the message said.

To me, the inevitably of the Jihadist sabre rattling renders it almost completely meaningless. It staggers me that there are really people out there who believe that Al-Qaeda would not be indulging in its bloodfests were it not for Al-Zarqawi's death.

In a normal world, the whole point of threats such as these is to say that, but for your conduct, I would not be engaging in my conduct. Anyone with marginal intelligence would see that this is not the normal world in which the Jihadists live. Instead, their predilicition for both preemptive and ex post facto slaughter manages to place them in two extremely ugly schools of revenge thinking. The first is the "I hit him back first" camp, which every parent knows is invalid. The second is Nazi "we will destroy the whole village to avenge a single Nazi leader's death" view of revenge, which everyone knows is morally bankrupt.

Either way, the simple fact remains: Islamafacists want to kill us. It's just that they're aiming their rhetoric at the people who don't want to see that Jihadists like to kill, and still want to convince themselves that it's all our fault. Loathsome people, those; almost as loathsome as the Islamofascists themselves.

UPDATE:  Here's another example of the MSM struggling for causal links.  I haven't even bothered to read this AFP story; the headline is enough:

Wave of bombings rocks Baghdad as Al-Qaeda vows revenge

It's as if, in the reporter's mind, Al-Qaeda has never bombed Baghdad before.  This day's work is the first time, and it's all the U.S.'s fault for killing that poor Al-Zarqawi fellow. 

How does the press square this naive mentality with it's daily dose of bleeding, leading stories about bombs falling here and blowing up there all over different parts of Iraq?  I'm reminded of Gilda Radner's character, Roseanne Rosannadanna, with her punchline:  "It's always something."  In the MSM world, in terms of Jihadist violence, it's always something . . . the U.S. has done to trigger the violence