“For some voters,” the New York Times’ polling editor writes today, “terrorists, terrorism, the war in Iraq, 9/11, Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida are all part of the same multi-headed hydra.”

We can’t imagine how they got that idea.

But we digress.

The Times’ Janet Elder says that the number of people who think Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 is dropping. That’s the good news. The bad news is that a third of all Americans still hold tight to the idea — and that it pretty plainly influences how they think about all sorts of things. As Elder writes, a New York Times/CBS News poll taken last month shows that people who still believe in a Saddam-9/11 connection are more likely than reality-based-community inhabitants to think the war in Iraq is justified and to view Iran as an immediate threat to the United States.

Oh, and then there’s this: Among the Saddam-did-it crowd, Rudy Giuliani is the presidential candidate who gets the highest favorable ratings.