President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, spoke in Pittsburgh Thursday as part of a series of campaign speeches she is making in seven closely contested states. There was no reason to expect otherwise, but she did not deviate from the misleading contentions on U.S. foreign policy that the Bush-Cheney ticket put forth in the four recent debates.

The speech, hosted 12 days before the election by the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh, approximated a campaign event. The turnout was good nonetheless, reflecting the fact that Pittsburgh's foreign policy audience had been seeking a visit from Ms. Rice for the four years of the Bush administration.

Ms. Rice said the country is in "a time of war." She claimed, with no evidence, that the United States has killed 75 percent of al-Qaida's personnel, that al-Qaida's sanctuary in Afghanistan had ended and that that nation, despite its precarious state and the presence of 20,000 U.S. troops, was under the control of a "free Afghan government."

She maintained that the Bush administration was successfully stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction -- citing the case of Libya, now open to U.S. oil companies' investment -- but left open the much more problematic cases of WMD in North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and Israel. She used Mr. Bush's debate line about freedom being on the march in the Middle East, with a passing reference to the administration's pallid position on a possible Palestinian state.

Ms. Rice repeated the administration's hope for elections in Iraq in January as a prospect of democratic government and claimed that Iraq's Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds are building toward a unified country. We will assume kindly that she has been isolated from all news reports on Iraq while traveling in the interior of the country.

Asked if the administration had previously anticipated the war's cost in dollars and in American and Iraqi lives, Ms. Rice sought to make again the nonexistent link between 9/11 and the Iraq war. She said the circumstances in the Middle East that had produced the 9/11 attack were still there and that the United States is thus obliged to endure the sacrifice of lives and money involved in the war.

Pittsburghers appreciate Ms. Rice's coming here, even this late in the game. What was disappointing was that her presentation was so partisan and out of touch with the reality of the world. If she actually believes what she said Thursday, it is frightening to think she is the president's chief national security adviser.