SO, THEY don't hate us for our freedoms, eh?

The horrific murder of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's best hope for democratic reform, is almost certainly the work of al-Qaida or al-Qaida-linked extremists. You know, the guys who would stop hating us if only we quit pursuing our interests in the Middle East.

Al-Qaida, the Taliban and Islamic extremists in general have long hated Bhutto for her pro-Western sympathies, for opposing their primitive utopianism, and for simply being a woman who dared do a man's job. They have threatened to kill her before, and now a shooter/suicide bomber has done it.

If this were a hit job by the Musharraf government, it found one hell of a loyal lackey to take both the rap and the explosion.

More likely is that Islamic extremists inside the state security forces looked the other way, or even assisted, as their radical brethren moved to exterminate the woman who did so much to shame them before the eyes of the world and thwart their jihadist ambitions.

These would be the same people who looked the other way as the Taliban and al-Qaida regrouped along the border with Afghanistan, by the way.

Anwar Sadat. Benazir Bhutto. Theo Van Gogh. Daniel Pearl. Three thousand Americans on 9/11. The editors of Jyllands-Posten -- almost. Salman Rushdie -- almost. Pervez Musharraf -- almost. We could go on, but maybe you get the point. The message is perfectly clear: Challenge the jihad, pay with your life.

A radical Islamic army seething with rage and delusion grows stronger, slaughtering more and more of our potential allies, as we spend years debating whether, to save our civilization, our warriors should ever be allowed to pretend to drown a captured enemy combatant.

If we don't see this threat with greater clarity, we will lose our chance to thwart its ambitions before it reaches its full strength. What we are seeing is only a taste of what is to come if the jihad is allowed to grow unchecked.