The death toll may top 100 in yesterday's horrific attacks at a Baghdad pet market -- and that's not the worst of it.

The worst of it is that the bombers weren't deluded and evil young men convinced that slaughtering innocents was their ticket to paradise and 72 willing virgins. Instead, the cowardly terrorists used two women with Down's syndrome to do their dirty work.

The top U.S. military commander in Baghdad, meanwhile, said there were indications that the two female bombers in Friday's attacks were "mentally handicapped" and that they might have been coerced into blowing themselves up by the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

"From what I've seen, it appears the suicide bombers were not willing martyrs, they were used by al-Qaeda for these horrific attacks," Maj. Gen. Jeffery W. Hammond told reporters in Baghdad. "These two women were likely used because they didn't understand what was happening and they were less likely to be searched."

Lt. Col. Steven Stover, a military spokesman in Baghdad, said that U.S. officers had reviewed photographs of the heads of the two women after the attack and that "they had the facial features of somebody who basically has Down syndrome."

An Iraqi military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Qasim Ata' Zahil, said that the two females bore a striking resemblance to each other and that he believed both were younger than 16. He said some shopkeepers in the two Baghdad markets recognized them as regular visitors to the area.

Evil just doesn't quite say enough about what the terrorists have done.