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SEPTEMBER 1, 2002. Hours after Dick Cheney declared the U.S. was in "mortal danger" of a Saddam Hussein attack, the Pentagon described how Iraq had tried 127 times to down U.S. and British jet patrolling its airspace and had not succeeded even once. That announcement came last week as U.S. jets pounded Iraqi air defense facilities for the eighth time in two weeks.

Raids on the "no-fly" zone imposed on Iraq at the end of the Gulf War a decade ago, have become more frequent since the White House began beating the war drums against Saddam. Iraq does not recognize the "no-fly" zone, which covers two-thirds of its airspace, but there's nothing it can do about it. Seemingly, the only thing in "mortal danger" here is Dick Cheney's immortal soul, whose stay in purgatory may have be exceedingly lengthened by its owner's latest exercise in mendacity.