Fact free . . . seeds of doubt

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Democrats have an instinct for the jugular. But, as the flap over the so-called "Niger sentence" indicates, they have exhibited a tendency recently to go for their own jugulars.

In his State of the Union address in January, President Bush said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa."

That was a lie, the Democratic National Committee is saying in a TV ad: "Now we find out that it wasn't true," the ad says. "Far worse, the administration knew it wasn't true. A year earlier, that claim was already proven to be false. The CIA knew it. The State Department knew it. The White House knew it."

The statement tricked the nation into war, several Democratic notables have asserted. This charge is ridiculous on its face, because Mr. Bush spoke three months after Congress had approved military action against Iraq. And I know of no pundit or politician who said, before this flap began, "I was opposed to war with Iraq, but when the president said Saddam was seeking uranium in Africa, I changed my mind."

Democrats prefer their politics fact-free. But a review of the facts is in order. Every word in the sentence is true. British intelligence believed then -- and believes now -- that Saddam was seeking uranium yellowcake in Africa.

The CIA could not confirm that the information passed on to them by the British was true. This does not mean, as Democrats assert, that the CIA has proved the information was false. It means simply that the CIA did not possess independent information confirming it was true.

Essentially, the only information the CIA possessed asserting a Saddam-Niger link was proven to be a forgery. But the British insist that that document was not the source of their report.

Democrats assert that Mr. Bush knew at the time of the state of the union address of the CIA's doubts, but went ahead with the charge anyway, forcing a reluctant CIA to go along. There is not a shred of evidence to indicate this is so.

Painful as it must be to be called a liar when you're not, I suspect Mr. Bush is secretly pleased that Democrats keep trying to hammer him on Iraq, and misstate the facts in doing so.