The biggest mistake we can make in the War on Terror is to underestimate our enemies. As we watch terrorists in Iraq increasingly target civilians, so-called "soft targets," it's tempting to think they're doing so merely out of frustration or sheer rage. While individual, low-level terrorists may even be dull-witted enough to think that blowing up innocent men, women and children advances their cause -- to enslave the world under fundamentalist Islam -- those who pull their strings are anything but stupid.

As the terrorists in Iraq switched their main focus from American military personnel to civilians, the Iraqis began to transfer their ire from the Coalition government to their own officials. It was tempting to breath a small sigh of relief, if only for the lessening of both American casualties and anti-American feelings. Even now, most people continue to wonder why the terrorists are so stupid as to attack innocent Iraqi civilians. Don't they realise that they're just turning public opinion against themselves?

Of course they realise. At least, their leaders do.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is anything but a stupid, mindless killer. In fact, he's a highly intelligent, extremely clever killer. He has been part of the terrorist movement in Iraq since before Saddam was removed from power, as Jordan's King Abdullah attested in a recent interview. "Since Zarqawi entered Iraq before the fall of the former regime we have been trying to have him deported back to Jordan for trial, but our efforts were in vain," Abdullah said. Zarqawi is a Jordanian, but Saddam apparently refused to turn him over to Jordan's government to answer for his attempted 1999 bombing of the Radisson Hotel in Amman. (Meanwhile, the Liberals still try to tell us that Saddam had no ties to international terrorism.) Zarqawi was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but has yet to serve his time.

Saddam sheltered Zarqawi when he fled to Iraq after Coalition forces destroyed his terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. Now he leads the terrorists working to destroy Iraq's fledgling democracy. Al-Qaeda has become so heavily invested in Iraq that beating the so-called "insurgency" there will strike a major blow to them. But is Zarqawi dumb enough to miss the fact that blowing up kids in Iraq's marketplaces is turning the populace not against each other, but against him and his terrorists?

In fact, he may be counting on it.

If Zarqawi and his merry band of thugs can drive the anti-terrorist feeling in Iraq to a fever pitch right before the next election, any candidate who promises to fight the terrorists will garner plenty of votes. A candidate perceived as capable of halting the attacks altogether would probably win in a landslide --even if that means making a deal with Zarqawi, instead of fighting him. Could the Iraqis be stampeded into accepting a candidate who's actually working with the terrorists?

We've already seen how an angry, panicked populace can be manipulated by terror and threats. The people of Spain voted for the candidate who promised to comply with al-Qaeda's demands to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq as part of his campaign. Although Jose Zapatero stood little chance of winning the 2004 election, the terrible terrorist attacks in Madrid helped bring him victory. Terror can be used to manipulate elections, even in a country with a history of democratic elections. How much easier will it be to push Iraqis into voting for a new strongman just to stop the attacks on Iraqi civilians? Is that what Zarqawi is trying to accomplish?

The most important job our forces in Iraq have over the next few months is counter-terrorist activities like Operation Matador, during which combined US forces killed over 125 terrorists and captured huge stockpiles of terrorist material. It is essential to break the back of the terrorists before Iraq falls under the sway of a new Saddam. If that happens, our efforts there will have been in vain.