Rudolph W. Giuliani has taken a lot of heat since Friday, and it isn’t fair. Of course he knows that George W. Bush was president when the hijacked planes hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

The former mayor suffered a bout of foot-in-mouth disease when he said during a television interview that “we had no domestic attacks under Bush.” Could it be that Mr. 9/11 forgot about 9/11? Not a chance. In short order, Mr. Giuliani apologized for his lapse. He said that he usually adds the words “since Sept. 11” when describing America as having been attack-free on President Bush’s watch.

Actually, even that statement is of dubious accuracy  unless one discounts post-9/11, Bush-in-the-White-House moments like the anthrax attacks, the airplane shoe bomber, the lethal assault on an El Al ticket counter in Los Angeles and, for that matter, the D.C. sniper shootings that killed 10 people and terrorized Washington and its environs.

But why quibble? The issue of the moment is whether Mr. Giuliani knew that Mr. Bush was president back in 2001. And he surely did. How can we be so certain? Because Mr. Giuliani himself said so.