THIS WEEK both John Kerry and his senior foreign policy advisor, Susan Rice, have argued that the Bush administration was wrong about Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi. He was not a danger before the war; his contacts with Saddam’s Iraq non-existent; and his relationship to al Qaeda only now cemented.

Their comments appear to be based on a single Washington Post (October 5, 2004) story concerning a leaked CIA reassessment of Saddam’s ties to Zarqawi. According to that news account, “A U.S. official familiar with the new CIA assessment said intelligence analysts are unable to determine conclusively the nature of the relationship,” and that the assessment was “still being worked.” Nevertheless, the same official stated: “What is indisputable is that Zarqawi was operating out of Baghdad and was involved in a lot of bad activities.”