Josh Marshall, at Talking Points Memo, has comments and links on the liars trying to cover up.

Some military jets are equipped with the ability to toss off a cluster of flares in mid-flight to throw off heat-seeking missiles. I think that's what Ari Fleischer and the White House were doing yesterday when they admitted that the president's State of the Union claims about Iraq buying uranium in Africa were wrong.

Yesterday, I posted portions of Fleischer's remarks from Monday morning's press gaggle in which he got awkwardly tripped up in questioning about the Niger-uranium issue and promised a definitive answer later in the day.

That statement went out in dribs and drabs over night and the Times and the Post have stories on it on their websites today.

But let's look at what the White House is saying. In essence, they're saying that the Niger documents were forgeries. But then, we already knew that. Indeed, the White House has conceded this for months. Sometimes publicly; sometimes privately. Here's what they're saying now, according to the Post: "Knowing all that we know now the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech."

But, of course, the real issue is that there is at least very strong circumstantial evidence that knowing what they knew then, the Uranium hocum never should have been put into the speech either. This is a classic case of trying to jump out ahead of a story by conceding a point that no one is actually disputing in the first place.
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