Polls can be wrong, but polls that show overwhelming tilts in one direction or another are usually on the mark. In this case, it's the Rasmussen poll: It shows that Republicans believe that Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda before 9/11 by a stunning margin of 59 to 19. (Among Democrats, 46 per cent believe that there were no such ties - a view that was confirmed in spades last week by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence -- and 34 think there were such ties.)

As a matter of fact, both results underline the critical importance of spending part of the next seven weeks before the November elections reiterating over and over that Saddam Hussein was not behind 9/11. You know it, and I know it -- but Americans don't. Long before getting to sophisticated arguments about the nature of the terrrorist threat and strategies for getting out of Iraq, we have to explain to Americans that the most basic premises of the Iraq war were falsehoods. Then explain it again. And again.