With polls, pundits, and the Kerry campaign proclaiming that Senator Kerry “won” Thursday night’s debate, it’s worth a more careful look at exactly how Mr. Kerry did it. “They had to close down the subway in New York when the Republican Convention was there,” he claimed. As millions of New Yorkers know, the subway ran without a hitch during the Republican National Convention. Maybe Mr. Kerry didn’t get word of that because his buddies all get around New York by windsurfing or in black cars with French diplomatic plates.

Mr. Kerry made more serious misrepresentations in respect of the war. Three times in Thursday night’s debate, the senator claimed, “We’re now 90% of the casualties in Iraq, and 90% of the costs.” Yet as the Wall Street Journal pointed out Thursday in a memorable editorial, Iraqi troops allied with America against the Islamic and Baathist terrorists have lost at least 750 soldiers to America’s 1,050.That means that America’s casualties, while each is important, do not add up to anywhere near 90% of the total. The Journal also pointed out that America isn’t bearing 90% of the costs, either, when you take into account the tens of billions of dollars in Iraq’s international debt that our allies have agreed to forgive.

In respect of Iran, Mr. Kerry was downright dishonest – twice. “If they weren’t willing to work a deal, then we could have put sanctions together. The president did nothing,” Mr. Kerry said. Mr. Bush tried to fact-check this one: “My opponent said that he’d work to put sanctions on Iran. We’ve already sanctioned Iran. We can’t sanction them anymore. There are sanctions in place on Iran.” Then Mr. Kerry shot back: “I first want to say something about those sanctions on Iran. Only the United States put the sanctions on alone, and that’s exactly what I’m talking about. In order for the sanctions to be effective we should have been working with the British, French and Germans and other countries. And that’s the difference between the president and me.” Mr. Bush tried to answer that one, too: “Back to Iran, just for a second. It was not my administration that put the sanctions on Iran. That happened long before I arrived in Washington, D.C.”

Viewers were left wondering who was correct in these he-said, he-said exchanges on Iran. The answer is, emphatically, Mr. Bush. For Mr. Kerry to claim that the difference between the president and him is that Mr. Bush favors unilateral sanctions on Iran while Mr. Kerry opposes them is absurd. On July 24, 2001, Mr. Kerry voted with a 96 to 2 Senate majority extending the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act that unilaterally imposes American secondary sanctions on Iran. He even cosponsored the bill. The Senate had voted unanimously or by voice votes in 1995 and 1996 to impose such sanctions without any public objection by Mr. Kerry. The senator was also part of a 90 to 4 Senate majority that on May 22, 1998, passed the Iran Missile Proliferation Sanctions Act.

Mr. Kerry even failed to tell the truth about lying. Moderator Jim Lehrer said, “You’ve repeatedly accused President Bush – not here tonight, but elsewhere before – of not telling the truth about Iraq, essentially of lying to the American people about Iraq,” Mr. Kerry said, “Well I’ve never, ever used the harshest word, as you did just then, and I try not to.” Yet the Republican National Committee immediately produced two accounts of Mr. Kerry, in September and December of 2003, of using the word “lied” to describe what Mr. Bush and his administration did on Iraq.

After lying about lying, Mr. Kerry went on to dissemble. He said of Mr. Bush, “We all know that in his State of the Union message he told Congress about nuclear materials that didn’t exist.” It was apparently a reference to Mr. Bush’s claim in his January 2003 State of the Union address: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” But the July 14, 2004, report of the British government’s Butler commission called Mr. Bush’s statement “well-founded.” It said, “It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports, the intelligence was credible.”

No sooner was the first debate over than Mr. Kerry was out with a campaign commercial that said, “George Bush lost the debate. Now he’s lying about it.” But the more one gets into the particulars, the more it’s clear who is the dissembler – not just on the little items but on the big issues – in this campaign.