It was spectacular political theater yesterday as President Bush’s director of central intelligence, George Tenet, took the stage and shared in impressive detail the pre-war calculations with respect to Iraq’s weapons programs and the postwar findings. Since the DCI’s speech followed by a week our editorial headlined “Unleash Tenet,” we don’t mind saying we were delighted to see him take the stage.

The substance of Mr. Tenet’s remarks are particularly important, and we’ll get to that in a minute. But first, the political drama. According to his official CIA biography, Mr. Tenet entered politics by working for three years on the staff of Senator Heinz, as both a legislative assistant covering national security and energy issues and as legislative director. Heinz’s widow is now the wife of the front-runner in the Democratic presidential field, Senator Kerry of Massachusetts.

Mr. Tenet has impeccable Democratic credentials. He was appointed director of central intelligence by President Clinton, and before that he served for four years as staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence while it was chaired by a Democrat, David Boren of Oklahoma. But despite that, Mr. Kerry has chosen to impugn Mr. Tenet’s credibility.

On TV’s “The Charlie Rose Show” on October 27, 2003, Mr. Kerry called for Mr. Tenet’s resignation. In a debate in South Carolina on January 29, 2004, Mr. Kerry claimed there had been “exaggeration” of the threat of terrorism. He was asked by Tom Brokaw, “Where has the exaggeration been in the threat on terrorism?”

Mr. Kerry responded, “Well, 45 minutes deployment of weapons of mass destruction, number one. Aerial vehicles to be able to deliver materials of mass destruction, number two. I mean, I — nuclear weapons, number three. I could run a long list of clear misleading, clear exaggeration. The linkage to Al Qaeda, number four.”

Mr. Tenet yesterday volleyed back at Mr. Kerry with admirable specificity. First, he cautioned that it was too early to reach definitive conclusions. “The Iraq Survey Group is continuing its important search for people and data. And despite some public statements, we are nowhere near 85% finished,” Mr. Tenet said.

Mr. Tenet addressed the question of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, which was one of the areas where Mr. Kerry accused the administration of exaggerating.

“Let me turn to unmanned aerial vehicles. The estimate said that Iraq had been developing an unmanned aerial vehicle probably intended to deliver biological warfare agents,” Mr. Tenet said yesterday in his speech at Georgetown University. “Baghdad’s existing unmanned aerial vehicle could threaten its neighbors, U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf and, if a small unmanned aerial vehicle was brought close to our shores, the United States itself.”

“What do we know today?” Mr. Tenet asked.”The Iraq Survey Group found that two separate groups in Iraq were working on a number of unmanned aerial vehicles designs that were hidden from the U.N. until Iraq’s declaration in December of 2002. Now we know that important design elements were never fully declared.”

Said Mr. Tenet: “The question of intent, especially regarding the smaller unmanned aerial vehicle, is still out there. But we should remember that the Iraqis flight-tested an aerial biological weapons spray system intended for a large unmanned aerial vehicle. A senior Iraqi official has now admitted that their two large unmanned vehicles, one developed in the early ’90s and the other under development in late 2000, were intended for the delivery of biological weapons.”

Mr. Tenet described his “provisional bottom line today”: “We detected the development of prohibited and undeclared unmanned aerial vehicles. But the jury is still out on whether Iraq intended to use its newer, smaller unmanned aerial vehicle to deliver biological weapons.”

If anyone exaggerated here, it looks like it was Mr. Kerry when he accused Mr. Tenet of exaggerating.

Mr. Tenet yesterday also addressed the nuclear issue, another area where Mr. Kerry accused the Bush administration of having exaggerated. Said Mr. Tenet: “My provisional bottom line today: Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon, he still wanted one, and Iraq intended to reconstitute a nuclear program at some point. We have not yet found clear evidence that the dual-use items Iraq sought were for nuclear reconstitution. We do not yet know if any reconstitution efforts had begun. But we may have overestimated the progress Saddam was making.”

And on the nuclear issue, Mr. Tenet added, “Let me tell you some of what was going on in the fall of 2002. Several sensitive reports crossed my desk from two sources characterized by our foreign partners as established and reliable. The first from a source who had direct access to Saddam and his inner circle said Iraq was not in the possession of a nuclear weapon. However, Iraq was aggressively and covertly developing such a weapon. Saddam had recently called together his nuclear weapons committee, irate that Iraq did not yet have a weapon because money was no object and they possessed the scientific knowhow. The committee members assured Saddam that once fissile material was in hand, a bomb could be ready in 18 to 24 months. The return of U.N. inspectors would cause minimal disruption because, according to the source, Iraq was expert at denial and deception.”

After September 11, 2001, for the Democratic presidential candidates to try to paint a military intervention against Iraq in these circumstances as somehow mistaken is naïve, even dangerous. We haven’t even gotten into the question of chemical or biological weapons, where the case against Saddam is as strong or stronger than it is on unmanned aerial vehicles or on nuclear weapons. Nor have we discussed the mass murders Saddam was able to commit against his own citizens using conventional weapons like machine guns. Nor his ties to terrorist groups. We would have supported the liberation of Iraq from Saddam’s dictatorship even if he didn’t have weapons of mass destruction and didn’t want any. In fact, spreading freedom and democracy was the main reason we supported the war. But Mr. Tenet’s remarks yesterday should go far to put to rest the idea that there was some kind of intelligence failure at work with respect to Iraq.

Even so, Mr. Kerry did his best yesterday to try to paint Mr. Tenet’s speech as some kind of indictment of the administration. “Today, we found out that George Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and the rest of the administration weren’t passing on sound facts on Iraq to the American people — they were playing politics with our national security,” he said. This is being echoed, for the moment, in much of the press, while Paul Krugman is out with a column today sneering that Mr. Tenet is “Orwellian.”

We think Mr. Bush had it right yesterday when he said, “Knowing what I knew then, and knowing what I know today, America did the right thing in Iraq.”

“We had a choice: either take the word of a madman, or take action to defend the American people. Faced with that choice, I will defend America every time,” Mr. Bush said. “September the 11th, 2001, was a lesson for America, a lesson I will never forget, and a lesson this nation must never forget. We cannot wait to confront the threats of the world, the threats of terror networks and terror states, until those threats arrive in our own cities. I made a pledge to this country; I will not stand by and hope for the best while dangers gather. . . .I will protect and defend this country by taking the fight to the enemy.”

As the election nears and more Americans hear this message, our guess is that the public will back Messrs. Tenet and Mr. Bush. Said Mr. Bush, “If some politicians in Washington had their way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power. All of the Security Council resolutions and condemnations would still be issued and still be ignored, scraps of paper amounting to nothing. Other regimes and terror networks, had we not acted, would have concluded that America backs down when things get tough. Saddam would still have his weapons capabilities, and life would sure be different for the Iraqi people. The secret police would still be making arrests in the middle of the night. Prisons and torture chambers would still be filled with victims. More innocent Iraqis would have been sent to mass graves. Because we acted, Iraq’s nightmare is over.”