KARL ROVE is a genius. No--Rove probably gets more credit than he deserves for political smarts, and the president gets too little, so let's rephrase that: George W. Bush is a genius.

Almost two weeks ago, the president ordered his White House staff to bollix up its explanation of that now-infamous 16-word "uranium from Africa" sentence in his State of the Union address. As instructed, and with the rhetorical ear and political touch for which they have become justly renowned, assorted senior administration officials, named and unnamed, proceeded to unleash all manner of contradictory statements. The West Wing stood by the president's claim. Or it didn't. Or the relevant intelligence reports had come from Britain and were faulty. Or hadn't and weren't. Smelling blood, just as they'd been meant to, first the media--and then the Democratic party--dove into the resulting "scandal" head first and fully clothed.

Belatedly, but sometime soon, the divers are going to figure out that they've been lured into a great big ocean--with no way back to shore. Because the more one learns about this Niger brouhaha that White House spokesmen have worked so hard to generate, the less substance there seems to be in it. As we say, George W. Bush is a genius.

In its October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, the CIA concluded that Saddam Hussein remained "intent on acquiring" nuclear weapons; that actual development of an Iraqi nuclear weapon would be but several months to a year away if Saddam could acquire sufficient fissile material; and that Baghdad had, in fact, already begun "vigorously trying to procure" such stuff, uranium ore and yellowcake, either of which would speed Saddam along.

This then-secret CIA report was filed one month after the British government had announced a similar judgment in public. Subsequently, a variety of American officials echoed this claim in public statements between October and January, in the context of repeated expressions of concern about Iraq's "continuing, and in some areas expanding," chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs, as the CIA put it in its October estimate.

On January 28, the president said in his State of the Union address that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Perhaps he should have said "the British government believes" rather than "has learned." But this statement was unremarkable at the time, and remains unremarkable today. And, contrary to the implications of George Tenet's disingenuous press release of July 11, the president said nothing that the Central Intelligence Agency had retracted or controverted in the months between the distribution of their October estimate and the State of the Union address.

It now turns out the CIA had its doubts--though they were less than definitive. It also turns out the British are sticking by their claim. And it remains the case, most important, that the African uranium business, whatever the truth of it, was never more than a single piece of the otherwise voluminous evidence driving allied concern over Saddam and weapons of mass destruction. How important were those "significant quantities of uranium from Africa"? The White House now acknowledges, in retrospect, that the matter didn't merit mention in the State of the Union.