Yesterday the Islamic supremacists calling themselves the Taliban staged a mass murder attack on a Pakistani police academy—and today the “commander” of this brutish gang of thugs is promising an attack on Washington DC.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) — The commander of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility Tuesday for a deadly assault on a Pakistani police academy and said the group was planning a terrorist attack on the U.S. capital.

Baitullah Mehsud, who has a $5 million bounty on his head from the U.S., said Monday’s attack outside the eastern city of Lahore was in retaliation for U.S. missile strikes against militants along the Afghan border.

“Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world,” Mehsud told The Associated Press by phone. He provided no details.

UPDATE at 3/31/09 9:24:16 am:

And meanwhile: Clinton offers olive branch to Taliban.

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday at a U.N. conference on Afghanistan that Taliban members in Afghanistan who abandoned extremism must be granted an “honorable form of reconciliation.”

“We must also support efforts by the government of Afghanistan to separate the extremists of al Qaeda and the Taliban from those who have joined their ranks not out of conviction, but out of desperation,” Clinton said at an international conference on Afghanistan in the Hague.

“This is, in fact, the case for a majority of those fighting with the Taliban,” she told delegates from more than 70 countries at the meeting.