Vice President Cheney has taken the low road as the designated hatchet man for President Bush's re-election bid.

After a parade of politicians skewered Democratic challenger John Kerry at the Republican National Convention, hit man Cheney charged that the country risks another terror attack with "devastating" consequences if Kerry were elected president.

His speech in Des Moines warned that if voters make the wrong choice on Nov. 2, "then the danger is that we'll get hit again" with a terrorist attack.

"That we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States and we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set, if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us."

The vice president later tried to retract that outrageous claim by telling the Cincinnati Enquirer that he wanted to "clean up" his earlier remarks.

Electing Kerry does not mean the United States will be hit again, Cheney told the Enquirer.

"Whoever is elected president has to anticipate more attacks," he said. "My point was the question before us is: Will we have the most effective policy in place to deal with that threat? George Bush will pursue a more effective policy than John Kerry."

Either version represents a sinister effort to exploit the war on terrorism in an attempt to advance Bush's candidacy, conveniently overlooking the fact that Bush and Cheney were in office three years ago when the actual 9/11 attacks occurred.

Are the Republicans really that desperate?

This verbal assault comes from a man who sought and obtained five deferments to stay out of the military during the Vietnam War. I don't have a problem with that -- a lot of honorable people went the same route. But I do have a problem when Cheney ignores his own heroic -- and successful -- efforts to avoid military service and then tries to demean Kerry's decorated war record.

The Bush re-election campaign is playing national security as its strong suit, and Cheney is out on the road defending the administration's unprecedented policy of "pre-emption." That is, you should attack before you are attacked.

The challenge is in knowing who could attack.

Bad as Saddam Hussein was as a monstrous dictator, there is no evidence that Iraq had planned to attack the United States even if he wanted to.

In order to shoehorn the Iraq mess into its pre-emption theory, the Bush administration drummed up two notions that the president and other officials have used to justify attacking Iraq.

One concept was that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, a theory we now know to be baloney.

The other concept was that Saddam sponsored or protected terrorists -- and here the administration artfully converged Saddam with Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks, making the invasion of Iraq appear to be U.S. retaliation for the attacks three years ago. Just remember those images of American GIs rolling through Iraq with photos of the World Trade Center or other mementos of 9/11.

After the war, asked directly if Saddam had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks, Bush said: "No." And the U.S. occupation of Iraq has unearthed no evidence linking Saddam with other terrorist groups.

This simple reality has not stopped Bush or Cheney or a host of other speakers at the Republican National Convention from continuing to depict the invasion and occupation of Iraq as part of the "war" against terrorism.

It's no wonder that large segments of the American public continue to believe that Saddam was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

Mass marketers and propagandists well know that the key to getting across a point of view -- right or wrong -- is repetition. It's effective especially when it comes from the highest office of the land, an exulted pulpit that should hold the greatest trust of the American people.

Cheney launched his salvos at Kerry on the same day that American deaths in Iraq reached the 1,003 mark with 7,000 more wounded soldiers.

These sad statistics provided yet another opportunity for the White House to mush together the war on terror with the war in Iraq.

When informed that Kerry had called the 1,000-plus deaths in Iraq "a tragic milestone," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters: "Well, we remember, honor and mourn the loss of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice defending freedom. And we also remember those who have lost their lives on September 11th."

It's time for clear talk from the president, who should explain to the American people what the U.S. goal is in Iraq and how much longer it will take to achieve it.

Before the Nov. 2 election, that is.

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