The campaign speeches Monday of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Pittsburgh respectively, are curious in their thrust and, thus, in the re-election strategy they indicate.

In the face of last week's Senate report and other overwhelming information that the vital underpinnings of Mr. Bush's decision to go to war -- Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaida -- were, in the event, false, he nonetheless continued to maintain in Oak Ridge that his decision was correct. He does this in the face of a death toll of American military personnel in Iraq standing now at 887, a ruinous drain on the Treasury of $150 billion and rising, and a steady decline in American support and influence among its allies across the world.

He continues to argue that Americans are safer because of what he did in Iraq even though the war has multiplied manifold the number of people who hate the United States across the world, and not just in the Muslim world. Mr. Bush's war in Iraq has, in fact, greatly increased the probability that the country's enemies will carry out another terrorist act in the homeland, perhaps before the elections.

The administration's reported contemplation of postponing the elections, coupled with this election strategy, inevitably raise the question of its intentions with respect to the smooth functioning of American democracy.

Mr. Cheney directs his accusations to the Congress, from which come the two Democratic candidates, Sen. John F. Kerry and Sen. John Edwards, throwing in their faces their October 2002 votes in support of the war. So that the record can be kept straight on that subject, it is important to recall that the congressional vote at that time took place in a context of Mr. Bush's promising to bring the matter back to the Congress and to work with the United Nations before actually going to war.

He didn't do either in the event, taking the country to war against Iraq, a sovereign country, without even a declaration of war. If it hadn't been Saddam Hussein's Iraq, no one's favorite country, and the United States, the world's only superpower, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003 would have drawn strong U.N. Security Council condemnation as unprovoked aggression, comparable to Iraq's own attack on Kuwait in 1990.

Mr. Bush also, of course, took advantage of the pre-2002-elections timing of the vote to put the Democrats up against the wall on the subject. A vote against the war at that time, with the administration ringing all the bells about how Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons and was collaborating with al-Qaida, would have required a level of political courage that does not normally characterize America's legislators.

So what do Mr. Bush's and Mr. Cheney's speeches, as examples, suggest that Republican campaign strategy is? Apparently it is, in the words of the song, "This is my story and I'm stickin' to it." No weapons of mass destruction, no Iraqi ties to al-Qaida, but the war was still right -- hoping that voters won't have paid attention to what the facts actually are.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are thus betting on the voters' not having taken the trouble to inform themselves on the truth of the matter regarding the Iraq war and, thus, believing them and voting for them.

It is a crude gamble and an expression of contempt for the intelligence of the American voter. It is hard to imagine it will work, but Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney obviously believe it is worth a try.