Spinning, spinning, spinning....

According to Bill Safire, the White House should not have distanced itself from its inclusion of the so-called "sixteen words" in the State of the Union Address ("The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa") because there is additional information which supposedly gives credence to the words. Although it seems obvious that, had the White House been aware of any credible information beyond the forged Niger documents, it never would have declared that "the sixteen words did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address."

With all due respect to Safire's Nixonian philosophy that "Being Republican Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry", the "new" allegations from the Butler report Safire believes somehow rehabilitate the uranium charge are not inconsistent with the White House's statement. That is, it remains probable either the White House based its statement upon the fact that Britain hadn't advanced any information beyond the existence of the forged documents, or that it didn't deem the information from Britain to be sufficiently credible to support the "sixteen words". Either way, the White House would have been correct to issue its pseudo-retraction.