Ken wrote:

'Whodunnit' isn't the issue, what was done is the determinant.
Ken also wrote:

Tell me who made and who exploded the bomb and for what purpose, then describe the actual damage done and I might be able to answer that...
and also:

Seems to me that is true and thus we're describing abberant actions that do not reach a threshold of inspiring terror
Now, I do not disagree that these different and conflicting standards of determining whether an act was terrorism could be useful yardsticks. To me, there's more than one kind of terrorism in the world and multiple causation acting as catalyst for that behavior with terrorists aiming for different objectives.

Pre-9/11, few counterterrorism experts would have counseled airline passengers and crew to resist hijackers because the idea that hijackers would suicidally fly the plane into buildings was not considered to be probable behavior, as the experts were working from the Western and Third World Marxist revolutionary group model to which al Qaida does not fit.

I see terrorism as more of a spectrum phenomena than a neat categorical box.