In their eagerness to knock down Bush's war in Iraq by using reports about the NIE, the Democrats risk giving another boost to the president in the "other" war, namely, the so-called war on terrorism. By embracing the NIE's reported conclusion that the war in Iraq has made the threat of terrorism worse, the Democrats play into Bush’s strong suit. While most Americans think that the war in Iraq is wrong and not worth fighting, polls continue to show that support for President Bush as the commander in chief of the Global War on Terror. Ironically, by endorsing the idea that radical Islamist terrorism is a major threat to the United States, the Democrats could end up driving U.S. voters into the arms of the president once again.

Since August, the president and his political team have been trying to "change the subject" from Iraq, where they are weak, to terrorism, where they believe that they are strong. By provoking sharp controversies over issues such as electronic surveillance by the National Security Agency and by aggressively asserting the need to torture terrorist detainees, the White House has sought to put Democrats on the defensive, portraying them as lily-livered vacillators unwilling to take ugly but necessary steps against the terrorist enemy. So far, whether this cynical (and un-American) strategy is working isn’t clear. But the image of the president as terrorist-fighter is a powerful one, still.