WITH THE release last month of the report by the Senate Select Committee on intelligence and Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, John Kerry was handed a gift that rarely occurs in a major political race: the chance to underscore a major failing on the part of an opponent. The committee found that there was no intelligence data to sustain President Bush's oft-cited reason for last year's invasion of Iraq -- the presence of WMDs and ongoing projects dedicated to their manufacture. Kerry said that the Bush administration had been "wrong, and soldiers lost their lives because they were wrong."