No 90-minute debate could cover all the important topics facing the nation, though moderator Gwen Ifill gave it a try Tuesday when Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. John Edwards met. Still, given the momentous events in Iraq – new information about the assumptions leading to the war and the city-by-city fighting this week – Iraq should have taken up more of the debate.

For the horserace/boxing match/baseball-playoff aspect of the night, Vice President Cheney would have placed his team in deep trouble had he stumbled/hit the canvas/struck out. He didn’t – he was strong, calm and, at times, commanding. Sen. Edwards had some fine moments in what became a very personal debate, but the vice president performed slightly better and might even, in retrospect, now admit he had met the senator once or twice before Tuesday night.

The Internet allows checks instantly on any assertion made by a politician, and soon after the vice president said, “I have not suggested there’s a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there’s clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror,” the Googling began. The vice president made or suggested a link between 9/11 terrorist Mohamed Atta and Iraq on Dec. 9, 2001, March 24, 2002, Sept. 8, 2002 and again in 2003, according to The Washington Post, when he called Iraq “the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11.”

This is crucial because it deals with judgment and a willingness to modify an opinion as new facts emerge. The United States went to war for many reasons, but the three major ones presented by the administration were the growing threat of weapons of mass destruction, Iraq as a center of world terror and Saddam Hussein’s brutal treatment of his own people. The last reason, by itself, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said in May 2003, is “not a reason to put American kids’ lives at risk.” Yesterday, the most extensive assessment to date, by Charles A. Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, showed the first reason, on WMD, to be faulty. Iraq may have desired WMD but it didn’t have them nor have the prospects of having them unless UN sanctions were withdrawn – in that respect the sanctions were working. The question of Saddam Hussein’s links with terrorist organizations is under dispute, but all sides agree – now, at least – that he was not connected to 9/11.

The debate that matters most in this election is over how to regard this information. Congress has looked deeply into this, but neither side in the presidential race has been any good at stepping back, examining the misperceptions and talking frankly about what they would do now in light of what they have learned. Maybe that’s not possible in the last month of an intense campaign, but that’s what the public deserves.