Why did Bush surrender? The president caved on the Wilson-Niger affair--but he was right all along.(George W. Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein sought to obtain uranium from Niger)

WHAT a difference a year makes. Last summer, the raging debate in Washington was over 16 words in George W. Bush's State of the Union speech. "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," the president had said on January 28, 2003, as he made the case for war in Iraq. By March, some Democrats had begun to claim the sentence was a lie. By May and June, the issue had grown acrimonious. By July, it was full-scale political war.

Now, one year later, with the publication of investigative reports from the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington and the Butler inquiry in London, it appears the president was right all along. British intelligence--and American intelligence, and other intelligence agencies as well--did indeed have substantial reason to believe that Saddam Hussein had sought uranium in Africa.

The Butler Report went so far as to call the president's 16 words "well founded." And the Senate report inflicted serious damage on the credibility of presidential accuser Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador who contends that the information he gathered during a February 2002 trip to Niger proved the president's claim bogus. For a year, Wilson has loudly accused Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and others in the administration of twisting the truth (Wilson called Cheney a "lying son of a bitch" during a campaign appearance for John Kerry last December). But the Senate report not only substantiated the president's claim--it also listed multiple examples in which Wilson himself made false or misleading statements about the Niger affair.

So it might seem that the book is now closed on the 16-word affair. But one issue remains unresolved. When Democrats first attacked the president over the uranium-from-Africa claim, the White House vigorously defended itself. But in July 2003, as the controversy reached fever pitch, the White House caved and said the 16 words should not have been included in the State of the Union address. So the question is, If the president was right, why did he back down?

The answer is not entirely clear. The White House has imposed a virtual blackout on comment about the whole Africa matter; officials there simply don't want to talk about it. Still, there are a few knowledgeable people willing to discuss the issue, and it's possible to piece together some conclusions about what happened. And the answer is that the White House appears to have succumbed to what one administration official calls a mixture of "two parts political fear, one part discretion, and one part confusion."

First, the confusion factor. On the evening of Monday, July 7, 2003, the president was scheduled to leave on his first trip to Africa. In the days leading up to his departure, the White House had been working feverishly to force Liberian president Charles Taylor from office. But at the same time, the uranium issue was growing into a virtual firestorm. It reached a peak on Sunday, July 6, the day before the president left, when the New York Times published Wilson's op-ed article, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," in which he charged that Bush had "twisted" evidence about Iraq's nuclear efforts. On Monday, the White House surrendered. "Knowing all that we know now," an unnamed administration official told the Washington Post, "the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech."

It appears that some of the president's aides were worried that the uranium issue would grow even more contentious in his absence, completely overshadowing the Africa trip. In addition, they knew there would be logistical problems in dealing with the issue while the president and his top team were on the other side of the world. "It's always more difficult when you're trying to gather all the facts, and the president's key people are traveling with him and several time zones away," says an administration official. All of that suggests that there ...