“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

There was only one problem with that nugget from the President’s State of the Union speech back in January, the one where he laid out his case for war on Saddam Hussein: The “evidence” upon which the claim was based was a forgery, and a clumsy one at that. And the question is being asked: did the Bush Administration, or the president himself, massage or hype the intelligence data to scare us into war?

Suddenly, facing a press that was asking tough questions for a change rather than a throng of happy, cheering sailors on an aircraft carrier going home, the administration turned testy. Dubbya, while on his recent trip to Africa, looked visibly annoyed when pressed by reporters. “I think the intelligence I get is darn good intelligence,” he said indignantly. “And the speeches I have given were backed by good intelligence.”

The Bushistas fanned out across the Sunday morning new programs, taking several tacks to try and deflect the criticism:

It was just a little thing. “Wolf,” National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “let me just start by saying it is 16 words, and it has become an enormously overblown issue.” Of course, anyone who lived through the Clinton years can tell you, word count doesn’t mean a thing. After all, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” is only nine words, and look where that got us.

It was technically correct while factually inaccurate. On July 13, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld came out with this idea: The statement about uranium was “technically correct” because “the British did say that.” This is known as parsing words, and its one of the things, again, for which the right savaged Bill Clinton. The administration knows doggone well what we were supposed to make of that phrase.

It’s the CIA’s fault. At one point, Dubbya defended the uranium comment by blaming the CIA: “I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services,” Bush said on his trip to Uganda. (So much for the “darn good intelligence” mentioned above.) Condi Rice backed him up, saying that if the CIA had said to take the uranium accusation out, “it would have been gone, no question.” CIA director George Tenet, ever the loyal foot soldier, obediently fell on his sword. “These 16 words should never have been included in a speech written for the president,” he said. Unfortunately, while these statements were being made, The Washington Post was quoting other aides who were acknowledging that the CIA had expressed doubts about the African connection four months before the speech. And the Associated Press reported that Tenet had removed a similar assertion from a Bush speech in Cincinnati three months earlier.

It just doesn’t matter. “This revisionist notion that somehow this is now the core of why we went to war, a central issue of why we went to war, a fundamental underpinning of the president’s decisions, is a bunch of bull,” according to now former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. After all, the administration assures us, Saddam was an evil dictator. It’s good that he’s gone. This ignores the fact that the world is full of evil dictators. What set this evil dictator apart and made it imperative to get rid of him was the threat that he had or was getting nukes, gas and germs and could use them at any minute. Remember this from the State of the Union? “With nuclear arms and a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, Saddam Hussein could resume his ambition of conquest in the Middle East and create deadly havoc in that region.” Or this: “The world has waited 12 years for Iraq to disarm. America will not accept a serious and mounting threat to our country, and our friends and our allies.” Or this: “If he does not disarm, we will lead a coalition to disarm him.” We’re apparently still waiting to do that, since I haven’t seen pictures of U.S. troops destroying the huge weapons stockpiles we’ve heard about.

Nothing to see here, move along. On July 13, Fleischer declared the whole matter over. ‘The president has moved on,” Fleischer said, “And I think, frankly, much of the country has moved on as well.” Rumsfeld agreed: “End of story,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Meanwhile, American troops in Iraq continue to be picked off. According to correspondents in the field, the morale of the 3rd Infantry Division continues a downward slide as that unit, the first in Iraq and the one that saw the most combat, is being told yet again that their job is not over and they may have to stay in Iraq. Maybe GWB should put on a tanker’s uniform and go explain to them that a major reason we sent them there was technically correct but factually inaccurate. Or that someone else wrote it for him. Or that it just doesn’t matter. Or that everyone should just move on. Maybe he can hang a banner behind him that says “End of Story.” After all, he is the president. We can trust him, right?