ON SUNDAY, the Kerry campaign put out a statement accusing the Bush administration of “misleading” the country in claiming a “direct link” between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks.

This is an appalling and, one assumes, deliberate distortion. No one–repeat no one–in the Bush administration has ever made such a claim. President Bush has twice explicitly rejected any suggestion that Saddam Hussein was behind those attacks. Condoleezza Rice has done the same on numerous occasions. Vice President Cheney, the subject of the Kerry campaign statement, has gone no further than to say that “we don’t know” about potential Iraqi involvement in 9/11. The Kerry statement accuses Cheney of linking Iraq to 9/11 “as late as last Friday.” This is simply false. The vice president made no such claim.