No one wants their child to die in the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place.

Iraq had no stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons for military use before last year's US-led invasion. Saddam Hussein's nuclear program had decayed since the 1991 Gulf War, an American weapons inspector said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

In response to the report by Charles Duelfer, the CIA special adviser who led the hunt for weapons of mass destruction, the White House said the Iraqi leader intended to restart the programs.

No connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda's attack on Sept. 11, 2001. No stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons or signs of a viable nuclear program in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It all adds up to no reason for the United States to invade Iraq. That means the invasion was a mistake for which Americans are now dying.

Democrats John Kerry and John Edwards are so intent on proving their muscle and resolve that they won't state the obvious any more than the incumbent Republicans, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. During last week's debate with President Bush, Senator Kerry stressed "winning" in Iraq, not "leaving." Senator Edwards reiterated the point during his showdown with Cheney: "We want to raise the active-duty forces by 40,000, double the Special Forces, so we can find terrorists where they are," said Edwards.

In contrast, Cheney actually made one appealing pitch during his Tuesday night debate performance.

"The question of troops is an interesting and important one," the vice president said deep into the 90-minute debate. "We look to our commanders on the ground in Iraq for guidance on what they think they need. If they need more troops, they'll ask us. But the key here is not to try to solve the problems in Iraq by putting in more American troops. They key is to get the Iraqis to take on the responsibility for their own security. That's exactly what we're doing. If you put American troops in there in larger numbers and don't get the Iraqis into the fight, you'll postpone the day when you could, in fact, bring our boys home. It's vital that we deal with any need for additional troops by putting Iraqis into the effort."

With the phrase "bring our boys home," Cheney, the career hawk, handed a tiny, sly sliver of rhetorical hope to people who want this war to end -- a population that likely includes everyone but Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. (At the same time, Cheney also managed to ignore female troops serving in Iraq.)

The Democrats remain too fearful of sounding like a George McGovern dove. By bowing to that fear, they allow the Republicans to define patriotism as a commitment to stay the course no matter how mistaken it may be. More might make it right, the Democrats argue, sounding a little too much like Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War.

During last week's debate the moderator, Jim Lehrer, said to Kerry: "You spoke to Congress in 1971, after you came back from Vietnam and you said `How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?' Are Americans now dying in Iraq for a mistake?" Kerry said, "No." The Democratic challenger wants voters to accept his conclusion that "the president made a mistake in invading Iraq," as Kerry said during the Coral Gables, Fla., debate -- but not the next conclusion -- that Americans are dying for a mistake. Kerry is tacking to the right of Bush, arguing that he will fight a tougher, smarter war, not that he will get America out of a wrong war.

The Bush-Cheney administration continues to insist this debacle in Iraq is the right war in the right place. Amazingly, both the president and the vice president say they would change nothing about their target or tactics. As for Bush, he continues his increasingly desperate-sounding rationalizing. "After 9/11 our object is not to wait for the next attack and respond but to prevent attacks by taking the fight to the enemy," he said yesterday.

It was the wrong enemy, Mr. President.

However, the Vietnam veteran who propelled an antiwar movement more than three decades ago by speaking harsh truth out loud is now a presidential candidate who hopes voters don't need him to say the obvious: They don't want their child or anyone else's to die for Bush's mistake.

It is the wrong time for reticence, Senator Kerry.

© Copyright 2004 Boston Globe

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