Dusty Rhoades continues to spin the leftist line that President Bush lied in his State of the Union Address by stating that “the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

The statement is of course true, but Rhoades says the basis for the British claim is a “clumsy forgery,” that Bush knew it and that Bush is, like his predecessor, a liar. This despite continuing British claims that their conclusion rested on other intelligence and that our own National Intelligence Estimate contained “a lengthy section in which most agencies of the intelligence community judged that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.”

If Mr. Rhoades is disappointed that large caches of the weaponry have not yet been found, let me remind him that Saddam Hussein is no longer in a position to use them, and that was the point of the exercise. The real issue for the left is not to provide a constructive critique of our intelligence services, agencies they have always tried to emasculate, or even a defense of Saddam Hussein, but an attempt to politically discredit President Bush.

Sporadic and ineffective bombing of Iraq by Clinton didn’t bother them, but a successful war does.

Richard Kania